BANCROFT 
LIBRARY 

<» 

THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 


The  story  of  the  trapper, 

by 

A.C.  Laut, 
Illustrated  by 
Authur  Heming  and  others. 


I^ew  York, 

D.  Appleton  and  company, 
1902. 


•of  t  Library 


EDITOK'S  PKEFACE 


THE  picturesque  figure  of  the  trapper  follows  close 
behind  the  Indian  in  the  unfolding  of  the  panorama 
of  the  West.  There  is  the  explorer,  but  the  trapper 
himself  preceded  the  explorers — witness  Lewis's  and 
Clark's  meetings  with  trappers  on  their  journey.  The 
trapper's  hard-earned  knowledge  of  the  vast  empire 
lying  beyond  the  Missouri  was  utilized  by  later  com- 
ers, or  in  a  large  part  died  with  him,  leaving  occa- 
sional records  in  the  documents  of  fur  companies,  or 
reports  of  military  expeditions,  or  here  and  there  in 
the  name  of  a  pass,  a  stream,  a  mountain,  or  a  fort. 
His  adventurous  warfare  upon  the  wild  things  of  the 
woods  and  streams  was  the  expression  of  a  primitive 
instinct  old  as  the  history  of  mankind.  The  develop- 
ment of  the  motives  which  led  the  first  pioneer  trap- 
pers afield  from  the  days  of  the  first  Eastern  settle- 
ments, the  industrial  organizations  which  followed,  the 
commanding  commercial  results  which  were  evolved 
from  the  trafficking  of  Radisson  and  Groseilliers  in  the 

vii 


viii      THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

North,  the  rise  of  the  great  Hudson's  Bay  Company, 
and  the  American  enterprise  which  led,  among  other 
results,  to  the  foundation  of  the  Astor  fortunes,  would 
form  no  inconsiderable  part  of  a  history  of  North 
America.  The  present  volume  aims  simply  to  show 
the  type-character  of  the  Western  trapper,  and  to  sketch 
in  a  series  of  pictures  the  checkered  life  of  this  adven- 
turer of  the  wilderness. 

The  trapper  of  the  early  West  was  a  composite  fig- 
ure. From  the  Northeast  came  a  splendid  succession  of 
French  explorers  like  La  Verendrye,  with  coureurs  des 
hois,  and  a  multitude  of  daring  trappers  and  traders 
pushing  west  and  south.  From  the  south  the  Spaniard, 
illustrated  in  figures  like  Garces  and  others,  held 
out  hands  which  rarely  grasped  the  waiting  commerce. 
From  the  north  and  northeast  there  was  the  steady 
advance  of  the  sturdy  Scotch  and  English,  typified  in 
the  deeds  of  the  Henrys,  Thompson,  MacKenzie,  and  the 
leaders  of  the  organized  fur  trade,  explorers,  traders, 
captains  of  industry,  carrying  the  flags  of  the  Hudson's 
Bay  and  North- West  Fur  companies  across  Northern 
America  to  the  Pacific.  On  the  far  Northwestern  coast 
the  Russian  appeared  as  fur  trader  in  the  middle  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  and  the  close  of  the  century 
saw  the  merchants  of  Boston  claiming  their  share  of 
the  fur  traffic  of  that  coast.  The  American  trapper 
becomes  a  conspicuous  figure  in  the  early  years  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  The  emporium  of  his  traffic  was 


EDITOR'S  PREFACE  ix 

St.  Louis,  and  the  period  of  its  greatest  importance 
and  prosperity  began  soon  after  the  Louisiana  Purchase 
and  continued  for  forty  years.  The  complete  history 
of  the  American  fur  trade  of  the  far  West  has  been 
written  by  Captain  H.  M.  Chittenden  in  volumes  which 
will  be  included  among  the  classics  of  early  Western 
history.  Although  his  history  is  a  publication  de- 
signed for  limited  circulation,  no  student  or  specialist 
in  this  field  can  fail  to  appreciate  the  value  of  his  faith- 
ful and  comprehensive  work. 

In  The  Story  of  the  Trapper  there  is  presented  for 
the  general  reader  a  vivid  picture  of  an  adventurous 
figure,  which  is  painted  with  a  singleness  of  purpose 
and  a  distinctness  impossible  of  realization  in  the  large 
and  detailed  histories  of  the  American  fur  trade  and 
the  Hudson's  Bay  and  North- West  companies,  or  the 
various  special  relations  and  journals  and  narratives. 
The  author's  wilderness  lore  and  her  knowledge  of  the 
life,  added  to  her  acquaintance  with  its  literature,  have 
borne  fruit  in  a  personification  of  the  Western  and 
Northern  trappers  who  live  in  her  pages.  It  is  the  man 
whom  we  follow  not  merely  in  the  evolution  of  the  West- 
ern fur  traffic,  but  also  in  the  course  of  his  strange  life 
in  the  wilds,  his  adventures,  and  the  contest  of  his  craft 
against  the  cunning  of  his  quarry.  It  is  a  most  pic- 
turesque figure  which  is  sketched  in  these  pages  with 
the  etcher's  art  that  selects  essentials  while  boldly 
disregarding  details.  This  figure  as  it  is  outlined  here 


x  THE  STORY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

will  be  new  and  strange  to  the  majority  of  readers,  and 
the  relish  of  its  piquant  flavour  will  make  its  own  ap- 
peal. A  strange  chapter  in  history  is  outlined  for  those 
who  would  gain  an  insight  into  the  factors  which  had 
to  do  with  the  building  of  the  West.  Woodcraft,  ex- 
emplified in  the  calling  of  its  most  skilful  devotees,  is 
painted  in  pictures  which  breathe  the  very  atmosphere 
of  that  life  of  stream  and  forest  which  has  not  lost  its 
appeal  even  in  these  days  of  urban  centralization.  The 
flash  of  the  paddle,  the  crack  of  the  rifle,  the  stealthy 
tracking  of  wild  beasts,  the  fearless  contest  of  man 
against  brute  and  savage,  may  be  followed  throughout 
a  narrative  which  is  constant  in  its  fresh  and  personal 
interest. 

The  Hudson's  Bay  Company  still  flourishes,  and 
there  is  still  an  American  fur  trade;  but  the  golden 
days  are  past,  and  the  heroic  age  of  the  American 
trapper  in  the  West  belongs  to  a  bygone  time.  Even 
more  than  the  cowboy,  his  is  a  fading  figure,  dimly 
realized  by  his  successors.  It  is  time  to  tell  his  story, 
to  show  what  manner  of  man  he  was,  and  to  preserve 
for  a  different  age  the  adventurous  character  of  a  Rom- 
any of  the  wilderness,  fascinating  in  the  picturesque- 
ness  and  daring  of  his  primeval  life,  and  also,  judged 
by  more  practical  standards,  a  figure  of  serious  his- 
torical import  in  his  relations  to  exploration  and  com- 
merce, and  even  affairs  of  politics  and  state. 

If,  therefore,  we  take  the  trapper  as  a  typical  figure 


EDITOR'S  PREFACE  xi 

in  the  early  exploitation  of  an  empire,  his  larger  sig- 
nificance may  be  held  of  far  more  consequence  to  us 
than  the  excesses  and  lawlessness  so  frequent  in  his 
life.  He  was  often  an  adventurer  pure  and  simple. 
The  record  of  his  dealings  with  the  red  man  and  with 
white  competitors  is  darkened  hy  many  stains.  His 
return  from  his  lonely  journeys  afield  brought  an  out- 
break of  license  like  that  of  the  cowboy  fresh  from  the 
range,  but  with  all  this  the  stern  life  of  the  old  frontier 
bred  a  race  of  men  who  did  their  work.  That  work  was 
the  development  of  the  only  natural  resources  of  vast 
regions  in  this  country  and  to  the  Northward,  which 
were  utilized  for  long  periods.  There  was  also  the  task 
of  exploration,  the  breaking  the  way  for  others,  and  as 
pioneer  and  as  builder  of  commerce  the  trapper's  part 
in  our  early  history  has  a  significance  which  cloaks  the 
frailties  characteristic  of  restraintless  life  in  untrodden 
wilds. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

I.— GAMESTERS  OP  THE  WILDERNESS       ....  1 

II.— THREE  COMPANIES  IN  CONFLICT         ....  8 

III.— THE  NOR'  WESTERS'  COUP 22 

IV. — THE  ANCIENT  HUDSON'S  BAT  COMPANY  WAKENS  UP  28 

V. — MR.  ASTOR'S  COMPANY  ENCOUNTERS  NEW  OPPONENTS  38 

VI.— THE  FRENCH  TRAPPER 50 

VII. — THE  BUFFALO-RUNNERS 65 

VIII. — THE  MOUNTAINEERS 81 

IX.-— THE  TAKING  OF  THE  BEAVER 102 

X. — THE   MAKING   OF   THE   MOCCASINS           ....  117 

XI. — THE  INDIAN  TRAPPER 128 

XII. — BA'TISTE,  THE  BEAR  HUNTER 144 

XIII.— JOHN  COLTER — FREE  TRAPPER 160 

XIV. — THE   GREATEST   FUR   COMPANY   OF   THE   WORLD  .           .  181 

XV. — KOOT  AND  THE  BOB-CAT 206 

XVI. — OTHER   LITTLE   ANIMALS    BESIDES   WAHBOOS   THE 

RABBIT 222 

XVII. — THE  RARE  FURS — HOW  THE  TRAPPER  TAKES  THEM  .  240 
XVIII. — UNDER  THE  NORTH  STAR — WHERE  FOX  AND  ERMINE 

RUN 258 

XIX. — WHAT  THE  TRAPPER  STANDS  FOR     ....  275 

APPENDIX .  281 

xiii 


LIST  OF  1LLUSTKATIONS 


FACING 
PA6K 

WITH  EYE  AND  EAR  ALERT    THE    MAN    PADDLES   SILENTLY  ON 

Frontispiece 

INDIAN  VOYAGBURS  "PACKING"  OVER  LONG  PORTAGS       .        .      30 
TRADERS  RUNNING  A  MACKINAW  OR  KEEL-BOAT  DOWN  THE 

RAPIDS        . 57 

THE  BUFFALO-HUNT 78 

THEY  DODGE  THE  COMING  SWEEP  OF  THE  UPLIFTED  ARM       .    143 
CARRYING  GOODS  OVER  LONG  PORTAGS  WITH  THE  OLD-FASH- 
IONED RED  RIVER  OX-CARTS 198 

FORT  MACPHERSON,  THE   MOST    NORTHERLY  POST  OF    THE 

HUDSON'S  BAY  COMPANY 228 

TYPES  OF  FUR  PRESSES 250 

XV 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 


PART  I 

CHAPTER   I 

GAMESTERS  OF  THE  WILDERNESS 

FEARING  nothing,  stopping  at  nothing,  knowing  no 
law,  ruling  his  stronghold  of  the  wilds  like  a  despot, 
checkmating  rivals  with  a  deviltry  that  beggars  paral- 
lel, wassailing  with  a  shamelessness  that  might  have 
put  Rome's  worst  deeds  to  the  blush,  fighting — fighting 
— fighting,  always  fighting  with  a  courage  that  knew 
no  truce  but  victory,  the  American  trapper  must  ever 
stand  as  a  type  of  the  worst  and  the  best  in  the  militant 
heroes  of  mankind. 

Each  with  an  army  at  his  back,  Wolfe  and  Napoleon 
won  victories  that  upset  the  geography  of  earth.  The 
fur  traders  never  at  any  time  exceeded  a  few  thousands 
in  number,  faced  enemies  unbacked  by  armies  and  sal- 
lied out  singly  or  in  pairs;  yet  they  won  a  continent 
that  has  bred  a  new  race. 

Like  John  Colter,*  whom  Manuel  Lisa  met  coming 
from  the  wilds  a  hundred  years  ago,  the  trapper 
strapped  a  pack  to  his  back,  slung  a  rifle  over  his  shoul- 

*  Whom  Bradbury  and  Irving  and  Chittenden  have  all  con- 
spired to  make  immortal. 

2  1 


2  THE  STORY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

der,  and,  without  any  fanfare  of  trumpets,  stepped 
into  the  pathless  shade  of  the  great  forests.  Or  else, 
like  Williams  of  the  Arkansas,  the  trapper  left  the 
moorings  of  civilization  in  a  canoe,  hunted  at  night, 
hid  himself  by  day,  evaded  hostile  Indians  by  sliding 
down-stream  with  muffled  paddles,  slept  in  mid-cur- 
rent screened  by  the  branches  of  driftwood,  and  if  a 
sudden  halloo  of  marauders  came  from  the  distance, 
cut  the  strap  that  held  his  craft  to  the  shore  and  got 
away  under  cover  of  the  floating  tree.  Hunters  cross- 
ing the  Cimarron  desert  set  out  with  pack-horses,  and, 
like  Captain  Becknell's  party,  were  often  compelled 
to  kill  horses  and  dogs  to  keep  from  dying  of  thirst. 
Frequently  their  fate  was  that  of  Kocky  Mountain 
Smith,  killed  by  the  Indians  as  he  stooped  to  scoop  out 
a  drinking-hole  in  the  sand.  Men  who  brought  down 
their  pelts  to  the  mountain  rendezvous  of  Pierre's 
Hole,  or  went  over  the  divide  like  Fraser  and  Thomp- 
son of  the  North- West  Fur  Company,  had  to  abandon 
both  horses  and  canoes,  scaling  canon  walls  where  the 
current  was  too  turbulent  for  a  canoe  and  the  precipice 
too  sheer  for  a  horse,  with  the  aid  of  their  hunting- 
knives  stuck  in  to  the  haft.*  Where  the  difficulties 
were  too  great  for  a  few  men,  the  fur  traders  clubbed 

*  While  Lewis  and  Clark  were  on  the  Upper  Missouri,  the 
former  had  reached  a  safe  footing  along  a  narrow  pass,  when  he 
heard  a  voice  shout,  "Good  God,  captain,  what  shall  I  do?" 
Turning,  Lewis  saw  Windsor  had  slipped  to  the  verge  of  a  preci- 
pice, where  he  lay  with  right  arm  and  leg  over  it,  the  other  arm 
clinging  for  dear  life  to  the  bluff.  With  his  hunting-knife  he 
cut  a  hole  for  his  right  foot,  ripped  off  his  moccasins  so  that  his 
toes  could  have  the  prehensile  freedom  of  a  monkey's  tail,  and 
thus  crawled  to  safety  like  a  fly  on  a  wall.  t 


GAMESTERS  OF  THE  WILDERNESS  3 

together  under  a  master-mind  like  John  Jacob  Astor 
of  the  Pacific  Company,  or  Sir  Alexander  MacKenzie 
of  the  Nor'  Westers.  Banded  together,  they  thought 
no  more  of  coasting  round  the  sheeted  antarctics,  or 
slipping  down  the  ice-jammed  current  of  the  MacKenzie 
Eiver  under  the  midnight  sun  of  the  arctic  circle,  than 
people  to-day  think  of  running  from  New  York  to  New- 
port. When  the  conflict  of  1812  cut  off  communication 
between  western  fur  posts  and  New  York  by  the  over- 
land route,  Farnham,  the  Green  Mountain  boy,  didn't 
think  himself  a  hero  at  all  for  sailing  to  Kamtchatka 
and  crossing  the  whole  width  of  Asia,  Europe,  and  the 
Atlantic,  to  reach  Mr.  Astor. 

The  American  fur  trader  knew  only  one  rule  of  ex- 
istence— to  go  ahead  without  any  heroics,  whether  the 
going  cost  his  own  or  some  other  man's  life.  That  is 
the  way  the  wilderness  was  won;  and  the  winning  is 
one  of  the  most  thrilling  pages  in  history. 

About  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century  Pierre 
Eadisson  and  Chouart  Groseillers,  two  French  adven- 
turers from  Three  Eivers,  Quebec,  followed  the  chain  of 
waterways  from  the  Ottawa  and  Lake  Superior  north- 
westward to  the  region  of  Hudson  Bay.*  Eeturning 
with  tales  of  fabulous  wealth  to  be  had  in  the  fur  trade 
of  the  north,  they  were  taken  in  hand  by  members  of 
the  British  Commission  then  in  Boston,  whose  influ- 
ence secured  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  charter  in 
1670;  and  that  ancient  and  honourable  body — as  the 
company  was  called — reaped  enormous  profits  from  the 


*  Whether  they  actually  reached  the  shores  of  the  bay  on  this 
trip  is  still  a  dispute  among  French-Canadian  savants. 


4:  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TEAPPER 

bartering  of  pelts.  But  the  bartering  went  on  in  a 
prosy,  half-alive  way,  the  traders  sitting  snugly  in 
their  forts  on  Rupert  and  Severn  Rivers,  or  at  York 
Factory  (Port  Nelson)  and  Churchill  (Prince  of 
Wales).  The  French  governor  down  in  Quebec  issued 
only  a  limited  number  of  licenses  for  the  fur  trade 
in  Canada;  and  the  old  English  company  had  no  fear 
of  rivalry  in  the  north.  It  never  sought  inland  tribes, 
but  waited  with  serene  apathy  for  the  Indians  to  come 
down  to  its  fur  posts  on  the  bay.  Young  Le  Moyne 
d'Iberville  *  might  march  overland  from  Quebec  to  the 
bay,  catch  the  English  company  nodding,  scale  the 
stockades,  capture  its  forts,  batter  down  a  wall  or  two, 
and  sail  off  like  a  pirate  with  ship-loads  of  booty  for 
Quebec.  What  did  the  ancient  company  care?  Euro- 
pean treaties  restored  its  forts,  and  the  honourable  ad- 
venturers presented  a  bill  of  damages  to  their  govern- 
ment for  lost  furs. 

But  came  a  sudden  change.  Great  movements  west- 
ward began  simultaneously  in  all  parts  of  the  east. 

This  resulted  from  two  events — England's  victory 
over  France  at  Quebec,  and  the  American  colonies' 
Declaration  of  Independence.  The  downfall  of  French 
ascendency  in  America  meant  an  end  to  that  license 
system  which  limited  the  fur  trade  to  favourites  of 
the  governor.  That  threw  an  army  of  some  two 
thousand  men — voyageurs,  coureurs  des  bois,  mangeurs 

*  1685-87 ;  the  same  Le  Moyne  d'Iberville  who  died  in 
Havana  after  spending  his  strength  trying  to  colonize  the  Mis- 
sissippi for  France — one  instance  which  shows  how  completely 
the  influence  of  the  fur  trade  connected  every  part  of  America, 
from  the  Gulf  to  the  pole,  as  in  a  network  irrespective  of 
flag. 


GAMESTERS  OF  THE  WILDERNESS  5 

'de  lardf*  famous  hunters,  traders,  and  trappers — on 
their  own  resources.  The  MacDonalds  and  MacKenzies 
and  MacGillivrays  and  Frobishers  and  MacTavishes — 
Scotch  merchants  of  Quebec  and  Montreal — were  quick 
to  seize  the  opportunity.  Uniting  under  the  names  of 
North-West  Fur  Company  and  X.  Y.  Fur  Company, 
they  re-engaged  the  entire  retinue  of  cast-off  French- 
men, woodcraftsmen  who  knew  every  path  and  stream 
from  Labrador  to  the  Kocky  Mountains.  Giving 
higher  pay  and  better  fare  than  the  old  French  traders, 
the  Scotch  merchants  prepared  to  hold  the  field  against 
all  comers  in  the  Canadas.  And  when  the  X.  Y.  amalga- 
mated with  the  larger  company  before  the  opening  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  the  Nor'  Westers  became  as  famous 
for  their  daring  success  as  their  unscrupulous  ubiquity. 
But  at  that  stage  came  the  other  factor — American 
Independence.  Locked  in  conflict  with  England,  what 
deadlier  blow  to  British  power  could  France  deal  than 
to  turn  over  Louisiana  with  its  million  square  miles 
and  ninety  thousand  inhabitants  to  the  American  Re- 
public ?  The  Lewis  and  Clark  exploration  up  the  Mis- 
souri, over  the  mountains,  and  down  the  Columbia  to 
the  Pacific  was  a  natural  sequel  to  the  Louisiana  Pur- 
chase, and  proved  that  the  United  States  had  gained 
a  world  of  wealth  for  its  fifteen  million  dollars.  Be- 
fore Lewis  and  Clark's  feat,  vague  rumours  had  come 
to  the  New  England  colonies  of  the  riches  to  be  had 
in  the  west.  The  Russian  Government  had  organized 
a  strong  company  to  trade  for  furs  with  the  natives  of 
the  Pacific  coast.  Captain  Vancouver's  report  of  the 

*  The  men  employed  in  mere  rafting  and  barge  work  in  con* 
tradistinction  to  the  trappers  and  voyageurs. 


6  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

north-west  coast  was  corroborated  by  Captain  Grey,  who 
had  stumbled  into  the  mouth  of  the  Columbia ;  and  be- 
fore 1800  nearly  thirty  Boston  vessels  yearly  sailed  to 
the  Northern  Pacific  for  the  fur  trade. 

Eager  to  forestall  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company,  now 
beginning  to  rub  its  eyes  and  send  explorers  westward 
to  bring  Indians  down  to  the  bay,*  Alexander  Mac- 
Kenzie  of  the  Nor'  Westers  pushed  down  the  great 
river  named  after  him,f  and  forced  his  way  across  the 
northern  Eockies  to  the  Pacific.  Flotillas  of  North- 
West  canoes  quickly  followed  MacKenzie's  lead  north 
to  the  arctics,  south-west  down  the  Columbia.  At 
Michilimackinac — one  of  the  most  lawless  and  roaring 
of  the  fur  posts — was  an  association  known  as  the  Mack- 
inaw Company,  made  up  of  old  French  hunters  under 
English  management,  trading  westward  from  the  Lakes 
to  the  Mississippi.  Hudson  Bay,  Nor'  Wester,  and 
Mackinaw  were  daily  pressing  closer  and  closer  to  that 
vast  unoccupied  Eldorado — the  fur  country  between 
the  Missouri  and  the  Saskatchewan,  bounded  eastward 
by  the  Mississippi,  west  by  the  Pacific. 

Possession  is  nine  points  out  of  ten.  The  question 
was  who  would  get  possession  first. 

Unfortunately  that  question  presented  itself  to  three 
alert  rivals  at  the  same  time  and  in  the  same  light. 
And  the  war  began. 

*  This  was  probably  the  real  motive  of  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Company  sending  Hearne  to  explore  the  Coppermine  in  1769-'71. 
Hearne,  unfortunately,  has  never  reaped  the  glory  for  this,  owing 
to  his  too-ready  surrender  of  Prince  of  Wales  Fort  to  the  French 
in  La  Perouse's  campaign  of  1772. 

f  To  the  mouth  of  the  MacKenzie  River  in  1789,  across  the 
Rockies  in  1793,  for  which  feats  he  was  knighted. 


GAMESTERS  OF  THE  WILDERNESS  7 

The  Mackinaw  traders  had  all  they  could  handle 
from  the  Lakes  to  the  Mississippi.  Therefore  they  did 
little  but  try  to  keep  other  traders  out  of  the  western 
preserve.  The  Hudson's  Bay  remained  in  its  somno- 
lent state  till  the  very  extremity  of  outrage  brought 
such  a  mighty  awakening  that  it  put  its  rivals  to  an 
eternal  sleep.  But  the  Nor'  "Westers  were  not  asleep. 
And  John  Jacob  Astor  of  New  York,  who  had  accumu- 
lated what  was  a  gigantic  fortune  in  those  days  as  a 
purchaser  of  furs  from  America  and  a  seller  to  Europe, 
was  not  asleep.  And  Manual  Lisa,  a  Spaniard,  of  New 
Orleans,  engaged  at  St.  Louis  in  fur  trade  with  the 
Osage  tribes,  was  not  asleep. 


CHAPTER   II 

THBEE   COMPANIES  IN   CONFLICT 

IP  only  one  company  had  attempted  to  take  posses- 
sion of  the  vast  fur  country  west  of  the  Mississippi, 
the  fur  trade  would  not  have  hecome  international  his- 
tory; hut  three  companies  were  at  strife  for  possession 
of  territory  richer  than  Spanish  Eldorado,  albeit  the 
coin  was  "heaver" — not  gold.  Each  of  three  compa- 
nies was  determined  to  use  all  means  fair  or  foul  to  ex- 
clude its  rivals  from  the  field;  and  a  fourth  company 
was  drawn  into  the  strife  because  the  conflict  menaced 
its  own  existence. 

From  their  Canadian  headquarters  at  Fort  William 
on  Lake  Superior,  the  Nor'  Westers  had  yearly  moved 
farther  down  the  Columbia  towards  the  mouth,  where 
Lewis  and  Clark  had  wintered  on  the  Pacific.  In  New 
York,  Mr.  Astor  was  formulating  schemes  to  add  to  his 
fur  empire  the  territory  west  of  the  Mississippi.  At 
St.  Louis  was  Manuel  Lisa,  the  Spanish  fur  trader, 
already  reaching  out  for  the  furs  of  the  Missouri.  And 
leagues  to  the  north  on  the  remote  waters  of  Hudson 
Bay,  the  old  English  company  lazily  blinked  its  eyes 
open  to  the  fact  that  competition  was  telling  heavily  on 
its  returns,  and  that  it  would  be  compelled  to  take  a 
hand  in  the  merry  game  of  a  fur  traders'  war,  though 
the  real  awakening  had  not  yet  come. 
8 


THREE  COMPANIES  IN  CONFLICT  9 

Lisa  was  the  first  to  act  on  the  information  brought 
back  by  Lewis  and  Clark.  Forming  a  partnership  with 
Morrison  and  Menard  of  Kaskaskia,  111.,  and  engaging 
Drouillard,  one  of  Lewis  and  Clark's  men,  as  interpre- 
ter, he  left  St.  Louis  with  a  heavily  laden  keel-boat  in 
the  spring  of  1807.  Against  the  turbulent  current  of 
the  Missouri  in  the  full  flood-tide  of  spring  this  un- 
wieldy craft  was  slowly  hauled  or  "  cordelled,"  twenty 
men  along  the  shore  pulling  the  clumsy  barge  by  means 
of  a  line  fastened  high  enough  on  the  mast  to  be  above 
brushwood.  Where  the  water  was  shallow  the  voyageurs 
poled  single  file,  facing  the  stern  and  pushing  with 
full  chest  strength.  In  deeper  current  oars  were  used. 

Launched  for  the  wilderness,  with  no  certain  knowl- 
edge but  that  the  wilderness  was  peopled  by  hostiles, 
poor  Bissonette  deserted  when  they  were  only  at  the 
Osage  River.  Lisa  issued  orders  for  Drouillard  to 
bring  the  deserter  back  dead  or  alive — orders  that  were 
filled  to  the  letter,  for  the  poor  fellow  was  brought 
back  shot,  to  die  at  St.  Charles.  Passing  the  mouth 
of  the  Platte,  the  company  descried  a  solitary  white 
man  drifting  down-stream  in  a  dugout.  When  it  was 
discovered  that  this  lone  trapper  was  John  Colter,  who 
had  left  Lewis  and  Clark  on  their  return  trip  and 
remained  to  hunt  on  the  Upper  Missouri,  one  can 
imagine  the  shouts  that  welcomed  him.  Having  now 
been  in  the  upper  country  for  three  years,  he  was 
the  one  man  fitted  to  guide  Lisa's  party,  and  was 
promptly  persuaded  to  turn  back  with  the  treasure- 
seekers. 

Past  Blackbird's  grave,  where  the  great  chief  of  the 
Omahas  had  been  buried  astride  his  war-horse  high  on 
the  crest  of  a  hill  that  his  spirit  might  see  the  canoes 


10  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

of  the  French  voyageurs  going  up  and  down  the  river; 
past  the  lonely  grave  of  Floyd,*  whose  death,  like  that 
of  many  a  New  World  hero  marked  another  milestone 
in  the  westward  progress  of  empire ;  past  the  Aricaras, 
with  their  three  hundred  warriors  gorgeous  in  vermil- 
ion, firing  volleys  across  the  keel-boat  with  fusees  got 
from  rival  traders ;  f  past  the  Mandans,  threatening 
death  to  the  intruders ;  past  five  thousand  Assiniboine 
hostiles  massed  on  the  bank  with  weapons  ready;  up 
the  Yellowstone  to  the  mouth  of  the  Bighorn — went 
Lisa,  stopping  in  the  very  heart  of  the  Crow  tribe,  those 
thieves  and  pirates  and  marauders  of  the  western  wil- 
derness. Stockades  were  hastily  stuck  in  the  ground, 
banked  up  with  a  miniature  parapet,  flanked  with  the 
two  usual  bastions  that  could  send  a  raking  fire  along 
all  four  walls;  and  Lisa  was  ready  for  trade. 

In  1808  the  keel-boat  returned  to  St.  Louis,  loaded 
to  the  water-line  with  furs.  The  Missouri  Company 
was  formally  organized,  J  and  yearly  expeditions  were 
sent  not  only  to  the  Bighorn,  but  to  the  Three  Forks 
of  the  Missouri,  among  the  ferocious  Blackfeet.  Of 
the  two  hundred  and  fifty  men  employed,  fifty  were 
trained  riflemen  for  the  defence  of  the  trappers;  but 
this  did  not  prevent  more  than  thirty  men  losing  their 
lives  at  the  hands  of  the  Blackfeet  within  two  years. 
Among  the  victims  was  Drouillard,  struck  down  wheel- 

*  Of  the  Lewis  and  Clark  expedition. 

f  Either  the  Nor*  Westers  or  the  Mackinaws,  for  the  H.  B.  C. 
were  not  yet  so  far  south. 

$  In  it  were  the  two  original  partners,  Clark,  the  Chouteaus 
of  Missouri  fame,  Andrew  Henry,  the  first  trader  to  cross  the 
northern  continental  divide,  and  others  of  whom  Chittenden 
gives  full  particulars. 


THREE  COMPANIES  IN  CONFLICT  11 

ing  his  horse  round  and  round  as  a  shield,  literally 
torn  to  pieces  by  the  exasperated  savages  and  eaten  ac- 
cording to  the  hideous  superstition  that  the  flesh  of  a 
brave  man  imparts  bravery.  All  the  plundered  clothing, 
ammunition,  and  peltries  were  carried  to  the  Nor' 
Westers'  trading  posts  north  of  the  boundary.*  Not 
if  the  West  were  to  be  baptized  in  blood  would  the 
traders  retreat.  Crippled,  but  not  beaten,  the  Mis- 
souri men  under  Andrew  Henry's  leadership  moved 
south-west  over  the  mountains  into  the  region  that  was 
to  become  famous  as  Pierre's  Hole. 

Meanwhile  neither  the  Nor'  Westers  nor  Mr.  Astor 
remained  idle.  The  same  year  that  Lisa  organized  his 
Missouri  Fur  Company  Mr.  Astor  obtained  a  charter 
from  the  State  of  New  York  for  the  American  Fur 
Company.  To  lessen  competition  in  the  great  scheme 
gradually  framing  itself  in  his  mind,  he  bought  out 
that  half  of  the  Mackinaw  Company's  trade  f  which 
was  within  the  United  States,  the  posts  in  the  British 
dominions  falling  into  the  hands  of  the  all-powerful 
Nor*  Westers.  Intimate  with  the  leading  partners  of 
the  Nor'  Westers,  Mr.  Astor  proposed  to  avoid  rivalry 
on  the  Pacific  coast  by  giving  the  Canadians  a  third 
interest  in  his  plans  for  the  capture  of  the  Pacific  trade. 

Lords  of  their  own  field,  the  Nor'  Westers  rejected 
Mr.  Astor's  proposal  with  a  scorn  born  of  unshaken 

*  This  on  the  testimony  of  a  North -West  partner,  Alexander 
Henry,  a  copy  of  whose  diary  is  in  the  Parliamentary  Library, 
Ottawa.  Both  Coues  and  Chittenden,  the  American  historians, 
note  the  corroborative  testimony  of  Henry's  journal. 

f  Henceforth  known  as  the  South-West  Company,  in  distinc- 
tion to  the  North-West. 


12  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

confidence,  and  at  once  prepared  to  anticipate  Ameri- 
can possession  of  the  Pacific  coast.  Mr.  Astor  coun- 
tered by  engaging  the  best  of  the  dissatisfied  Nor'  West- 
ers for  his  Pacific  Fur  Company.  Duncan  MacDougall, 
a  little  pepper-box  of  a  Scotchman,  with  a  bumptious 
idea  of  authority  which  was  always  making  other  eyes 
smart,  was  to  be  Mr.  Astor's  proxy  on  the  ship  to 
round  the  Horn  and  at  the  headquarters  of  the  com- 
pany on  the  Pacific.  Donald  MacKenzie  was  a  relative 
of  Sir  Alexander  of  the  Nor'  Westers,  and  must  have 
left  the  northern  traders  from  some  momentary  pique; 
for  he  soon  went  back  to  the  Canadian  companies,  be- 
came chief  factor  at  Fort  Garry,*  the  headquarters  of 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Company,  and  was  for  a  time  gover- 
nor of  Red  River.  Alexander  MacKay  had  accompanied 
Sir  Alexander  MacKenzie  on  his  famous  northern 
trips,  and  was  one  Nor'  Wester  who  served  Mr.  Astor 
with  fidelity  to  the  death.  The  elder  Stuart  was  a 
rollicking  winterer  from  The  Labrador,  with  the  hail- 
fellow-well-met-air  of  an  equal  among  the  mercurial 
French-Canadians.  The  younger  Stuart  was  of  the 
game,  independent  spirit  that  made  Nor*  Westers 
famous. 

Of  the  Tonquin's  voyage  round  the  Horn — with  its 
crew  of  twenty,  and  choleric  Captain  Thorn,  and  four  f 
partners  headed  by  the  fussy  little  MacDougall  in  mu- 
tiny against  the  captain's  discipline,  and  twelve  clerks 
always  getting  their  landlubber  clumsiness  in  the  sail- 
ors' way,  and  thirteen  voyageurs  ever  grumbling  at  the 
ocean  swell  that  gave  them  qualms  unknown  on  inland 

*  The  modern  Winnipeg. 

f  MacKay,  MacDougall,  and  the  two  Stuarts 


THREE  COMPANIES  IN  CONFLICT  13 

waters — little  need  be  said.  Washington  Irving  has 
told  this  story ;  and  what  Washington  Irving  leaves  un- 
told, Captain  Chittenden  has  recently  unearthed  from 
the  files  of  the  Missouri  archives. 

The  Tonquin  sailed  from  New  York,  September  6, 
1810.  The  captain  had  been  a  naval  officer,  and  cursed 
the  partners  for  their  easy  familiarity  with  the  men 
before  the  mast,  and  the  note-writing  clerks  for  a  lot 
of  scribbling  blockheads,  and  the  sea-sick  voyageurs  for 
a  set  of  fresh-water  braggarts.  And  the  captain's  ami- 
able feelings  were  reciprocated  by  every  Nor*  Wester 
on  board. 

Cape  Horn  was  doubled  on  Christmas  Day,  Hawaii 
sighted  in  February,  some  thirty  Sandwich  Islanders 
engaged  for  service  in  the  new  company,  and  the  Co- 
lumbia entered  at  the  end  of  March,  1811.  Eight  lives 
were  lost  attempting  to  run  small  boats  against  the 
turbulent  swell  of  tide  and  current.  The  place  to  land, 
the  site  to  build,  details  of  the  new  fort,  Astoria — all 
were  subjects  for  the  jangling  that  went  on  between 
the  fuming  little  Scotchman  MacDougall  and  Captain 
Thorn,  till  the  Tonquin  weighed  anchor  on  the  1st  of 
June  and  sailed  away  to  trade  on  the  north  coast,  ac- 
companied by  only  one  partner,  Alexander  MacKay, 
and  one  clerk,  James  Lewis. 

The  obstinacy  that  had  dominated  Captain  Thorn 
continued  to  dictate  a  wrong-headed  course.  In  spite 
of  Mr.  Astor's  injunction  to  keep  Indians  off  the  ship 
and  MacKay's  warning  that  the  Nootka  tribes  were 
treacherous,  the  captain  allowed  natives  to  swarm  over 
his  decks.  Once,  when  MacKay  was  on  shore,  Thorn 
lost  his  temper,  struck  an  impertinent  chief  in  the  face 
with  a  bundle  of  furs,  and  expelled  the  Indian  from  the 


14  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

ship.  When  MacKay  came  back  and  learned  what  had 
happened,  he  warned  the  captain  of  Indian  vengeance 
and  urged  him  to  leave  the  harbour.  These  warnings 
the  captain  scorned,  welcoming  back  the  Indians,  and 
no  doubt  exulting  to  see  that  they  had  become  almost 
servile. 

One  morning,  when  Thorn  and  MacKay  were  yet 
asleep,  a  pirogue  with  twenty  Indians  approached  the 
ship.  The  Indians  were  unarmed,  and  held  up  furs  to 
trade.  They  were  welcomed  on  deck.  Another  canoe 
glided  near  and  another  band  mounted  the  ship's  lad- 
der. Soon  the  vessel  was  completely  surrounded  with 
canoes,  the  braves  coming  aboard  with  furs,  the  squaws 
laughing  and  chatting  and  rocking  their  crafts  at  the 
ship's  side.  This  day  the  Indians  were  neither  perti- 
nacious nor  impertinent  in  their  trade.  Matters  went 
swimmingly  till  some  of  the  Tonquin's  crew  noticed 
with  alarm  that  all  the  Indians  were  taking  knives  and 
other  weapons  in  exchange  for  their  furs  and  that 
groups  were  casually  stationing  themselves  at  positions 
of  wonderful  advantage  on  the  deck.  MacKay  and 
Thorn  were  quickly  called. 

This  is  probably  what  the  Indians  were  awaiting. 

MacKay  grasped  the  fearful  danger  of  the  situation 
and  again  warned  the  captain.  Again  Thorn  slighted 
the  warning.  But  anchors  were  hoisted.  The  Indians 
thronged  closer,  as  if  in  the  confusion  of  hasty  trade. 
Then  the  dour-headed  Thorn  understood.  With  a 
shout  he  ordered  the  decks  cleared.  His  shout  was  an- 
swered by  a  counter-shout — the  wild,  shrill  shriekings 
of  the  Indian  war-cry !  All  the  newly-bought  weapons 
flashed  in  the  morning  sun.  Lewis,  the  clerk,  fell  first, 
bending  over  a  pile  of  goods,  and  rolled  down  the  com- 


THREE  COMPANIES  IN  CONFLICT  15 

panion-way  with  a  mortal  stab  in  his  back.  MacKay 
was  knocked  from  his  seat  on  the  taffrail  by  a  war-club 
and  pitched  overboard  to  the  canoes,  where  the  squaws 
received  him  on  their  knives.  Thorn  had  been  roused 
so  suddenly  that  he  had  no  weapon  but  his  pocket-knife. 
With  this  he  was  trying  to  fight  his  way  to  the  fire- 
arms of  the  cabin,  when  he  was  driven,  faint  from  loss 
of  blood,  to  the  wheel-house.  A  tomahawk  clubbed 
down,  and  he,  too,  was  pitched  overboard  to  the  knives 
of  the  squaws. 

While  the  officers  were  falling  on  the  quarter-deck, 
sailors  and  Sandwich  Islanders  were  fighting  to  the 
death  elsewhere.  The  seven  men  who  had  been  sent 
up  the  ratlins  to  rig  sails  came  shinning  down  ropes 
and  masts  to  gain  the  cabin.  Two  were  instantly  killed. 
A  third  fell  down  the  main  hatch  fatally  wounded ;  and 
the  other  four  got  into  the  cabin,  where  they  broke 
holes  and  let  fly  with  musket  and  rifle.  This  sent  the 
savages  scattering  overboard  to  the  waiting  canoes. 
The  survivors  then  fired  charge  after  charge  from  the 
deck  cannon,  which  drove  the  Indians  to  land  with  tre- 
mendous loss  of  life. 

All  day  the  Indians  watched  the  Tonquin's  sails  flap- 
ping to  the  wind ;  but  none  of  the  ship's  crew  appeared 
on  the  deck.  The  next  morning  the  Tonquin  still  lay 
rocking  to  the  tide;  but  no  white  men  emerged  from 
below.  Eager  to  plunder  the  apparently  deserted 
ship,  the  Indians  launched  their  canoes  and  cautiously 
paddled  near.  A  white  man — one  of  those  who  had 
fallen  down  the  hatch  wounded — staggered  up  to  the 
deck,  waved  for  the  natives  to  come  on  board,  and 
dropped  below.  Gluttonous  of  booty,  the  savages  beset 
the  sides  of  the  Tonquin  like  flocks  of  carrion-birds. 


16  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

Barely  were  they  on  deck  when  sea  and  air  were  rent 
with  a  terrific  explosion  as  of  ten  thousand  cannon! 
The  ship  was  blown  to  atoms,  bodies  torn  asunder,  and 
the  sea  scattered  with  bloody  remnants  of  what  had  been 
living  men  but  a  moment  before. 

The  mortally  wounded  man,  thought  to  be  Lewis, 
the  clerk,*  had  determined  to  effect  the  death  of  his 
enemies  on  his  own  pyre.  Unable  to  escape  with  the 
other  four  refugees  under  cover  of  night,  he  had 
put  a  match  to  four  tons  of  powder  in  the  hold.  But 
the  refugees  might  better  have  perished  with  the  Ton- 
quin;  for  head- winds  drove  them  ashore,  where  they 
were  captured  and  tortured  to  death  with  all  the  pro- 
longed cruelty  that  savages  practise^.  Between  twenty 
and  thirty  lives  were  lost  in  this  disaster  to  the  Pacific 
Fur  Company;  and  MacDougall  was  left  at  Astoria 
with  but  a  handful  of  men  and  a  weakly-built  fort  to 
wait  the  coming  of  the  overland  traders  whom  Mr. 
Astor  was  sending  by  way  of  the  Missouri  and  Co- 
lumbia. 

*  Franchere,  one  of  the  scribbling  clerks  whom  Thorn  so 
detested,  says  this  man  was  Weekes,  who  almost  lost  his  life 
entering  the  Columbia.  Irving,  who  drew  much  of  his  material 
from  Franchere,  says  Lewis,  and  may  have  had  special  informa- 
tion from  Mr.  Astor  ;  but  all  accounts — Franchere's,  and  Ross 
Cox's,  and  Alexander  Ross's — are  from  the  same  source,  the 
Indian  interpreter,  who,  in  the  confusion  of  the  massacre,  sprang 
overboard  into  the  canoes  of  the  squaws,  who  spared  him  on 
account  of  his  race.  Franchere  became  prominent  in  Montreal, 
Cox  in  British  Columbia,  and  Ross  in  Red  River  Settlement  of 
Winnipeg,  where  the  story  of  the  fur  company  conflict  became 
folk-lore  to  the  old  settlers.  There  is  scarcely  a  family  but  has 
some  ancestor  who  took  part  in  the  contest  among  the  fur  com- 
panies at  the  opening  of  the  nineteenth  century,  and  the  tale  is 
part  of  the  settlement's  traditions. 


THREE  COMPANIES  IN  CONFLICT  17 

Indian  runners  brought  vague  rumours  of  thirty 
white  men  building  a  fort  on  the  Upper  Columbia.  If 
these  had  been  the  overland  party,  they  would  have 
come  on  to  Astoria.  Who  they  were,  MacDougall,  who 
had  himself  been  a  Nor'  Wester,  could  easily  guess.  As 
a  countercheck,  Stuart  of  Labrador  was  preparing  to 
go  up-stream  and  build  a  fur  post  for  the  Pacific  Com- 
pany; but  Astoria  was  suddenly  electrified  by  the  ap- 
parition of  nine  white  men  in  a  canoe  flying  a  British 
flag. 

The  North- West  Company  arrived  just  three  months 
too  late  I 

David  Thompson,  the  partner  at  the  head  of  the 
newcomers,  had  been  delayed  in  the  mountains  by  the 
desertion  of  his  guides.  Much  to  the  disgust  of  Labra- 
dor Stuart,  who  might  change  masters  often  but  was 
loyal  to  only  one  master  at  a  time,  MacDougall  and 
Thompson  hailed  each  other  as  old  friends.  Every 
respect  is  due  Mr.  Thompson  as  an  explorer,  but  to  the 
Astorians  living  under  the  ruthless  code  of  fur-trading 
rivalry,  he  should  have  been  nothing  more  than  a 
North- West  spy,  to  be  guardedly  received  in  a  Pacific 
Company  fort.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  he  was  welcomed 
with  open  arms,  saw  everything,  and  set  out  again  with 
a  supply  of  Astoria  provisions. 

History  is  not  permitted  to  jump  at  conclusions, 
but  unanswered  questions  will  always  cling  round 
Thompson's  visit.  Did  he  bear  some  message  from  the 
Nor'  Westers  to  MacDougall?  Why  was  Stuart,  an 
honourable,  fair-minded  man,  in  such  high  dudgeon 
that  he  shook  free  of  Thompson's  company  on  their 
way  back  up  the  Columbia  ?  Why  did  MacDougall  lose 
his  tone  of  courage  with  such  surprising  swiftness? 
3 


18  THE  STORY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

How  could  the  next  party  of  Nor'  Westers  take  him 
back  into  the  fold  and  grant  him  a  partnership  osten- 
sibly without  the  knowledge  of  the  North- West  annual 
council,  held  in  Fort  William  on  Lake  Superior? 

Early  in  August  wandering  tribes  brought  news 
of  the  Tonquin's  destruction,  and  Astoria  bestirred  it- 
self to  strengthen  pickets,  erect  bastions,  mount  four- 
pounders,  and  drill  for  war.  MacDougalFs  North- West 
training  now  came  out,  and  he  entered  on  a  policy 
of  conciliation  with  the  Indians  that  culminated  in  his 
marrying  Comcomly's  daughter.  He  also  perpetrated 
the  world-famous  threat  of  letting  small-pox  out  of  a 
bottle  exhibited  to  the  chiefs  unless  they  maintained 
good  behaviour.  Traders  established  inland  posts,  the 
schooner  Dolly  was  built,  and  New  Year's  Day  of  1812 
ushered  in  with  a  firing  of  cannon  and  festive  allowance 
of  rum.  On  January  18th  arrived  the  forerunners  of 
the  overland  party,  ragged,  wasted,  starving,  with  a  tale 
of  blundering  and  mismanagement  that  must  have  been 
gall  to  MacKenzie,  the  old  Nor'  Wester  accompanying 
them.  The  main  body  under  Hunt  reached  Astoria  in 
February,  and  two  other  detachments  later. 

The  management  of  the  overlanders  had  been  in- 
trusted to  Wilson  Price  Hunt  of  New  Jersey,  who  at 
once  proceeded  to  Montreal  with  Donald  MacKenzie, 
the  Nor'  Wester.  Here  the  fine  hand  of  the  North- 
West  Company  was  first  felt.  Eum,  threats,  prom- 
ises, and  sudden  orders  whisking  them  away  prevented 
capable  voyageurs  from  enlisting  under  the  Pacific 
Company.  Only  worthless  fellows  could  be  engaged, 
which  explains  in  part  why  these  empty  braggarts  so 
often  failed  Mr.  Hunt.  Pushing  up  the  Ottawa  in 


THREE  COMPANIES  IN  CONFLICT  19 

a  birch  canoe,  Hunt  and  MacKenzie  crossed  the  lake 
to  Michilimackinac. 

Here  the  hand  of  the  North- West  Company  was 
again  felt.  Tattlers  went  from  man  to  man  telling 
yarns  of  terror  to  frighten  engages  back.  Did  a  man 
enlist?  Sudden  debts  were  remembered  or  manufac- 
tured, and  the  bill  presented  to  Hunt.  Was  a  voyageur 
on  the  point  of  embarking?  A  swarm  of  naked  brats 
with  a  frouzy  Indian  wife  set  up  a  howl  of  woe.  Hunt 
finally  got  off  with  thirty  men,  accompanied  by  Mr. 
Kamsay  Crooks,  a  distinguished  Nor5  Wester,  who  af- 
terward became  famous  as  the  president  of  the  Amer- 
ican Fur  Company.  Going  south  by  way  of  Green  Bay 
and  the  Mississippi,  Hunt  reached  St.  Louis,  where 
the  machinations  of  another  rival  were  put  to  work. 

Having  rejected  Mr.  Astor's  suggestion  to  take  part 
in  the  Pacific  Company,  Mr.  Manuel  Lisa  of  the  Mis- 
souri traders  did  not  propose  to  see  his  field  invaded. 
The  same  difficulties  were  encountered  at  St.  Louis  in 
engaging  men  as  at  Montreal,  and  when  Hunt  was 
finally  ready  in  March,  1811,  to  set  out  with  his  sixty 
men  up  the  Missouri,  Lisa  resurrected  a  liquor  debt 
against  Pierre  Dorion,  Hunt's  interpreter,  with  the 
fluid  that  cheers  a  French-Canadian  charged  at  ten 
dollars  a  quart.  Pierre  slipped  Lisa's  coil  by  going 
overland  through  the  woods  and  meeting  Hunt's  party 
farther  up-stream,  beyond  the  law. 

Whatever  his  motive,  Lisa  at  once  organized  a 
search  party  of  twenty  picked  voyageurs  to  go  up  the 
Missouri  to  the  rescue  of  that  Andrew  Henry  who  had 
fled  from  the  Blackfeet  over  the  mountains  to  Snake 
Eiiver.  Traders  too  often  secured  safe  passage  through 
hostile  territory  in  those  lawless  days  by  giving  the 


20  THE  STORY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

savages  muskets  enough  to  blow  out  the  brains  of  the 
next  comers.  Lisa  himself  was  charged  with  this  by 
Crooks  and  MacLellan.*  Perhaps  that  was  his  reason 
for  pushing  ahead  at  all  speed  to  overtake  Hunt  before 
either  party  had  reached  Sioux  territory. 

Hunt  got  wind  of  the  pursuit.  The  faster  Lisa 
came,  the  harder  Hunt  fled.  This  curious  race  lasted 
for  a  thousand  miles  and  ended  in  Lisa  coming  up  with 
the  Astorians  on  June  2d.  For  a  second  time  the  Span- 
iard tampered  with  Dorion.  Had  not  two  English 
travellers  intervened,  Hunt  and  Lisa  would  have  set- 
tled their  quarrel  with  pistols  for  two.  Thereafter  the 
rival  parties  proceeded  in  friendly  fashion,  Lisa  helping 
to  gather  horses  for  Hunt's  party  to  cross  the 
mountains. 

That  overland  journey  was  one  of  the  most  pitiful, 
fatuous,  mismanaged  expeditions  in  the  fur  trade. 
Why  a  party  of  sixty-four  well-armed,  well-provisioned 
men  failed  in  doing  what  any  two  voyageurs  or  trappers 
were  doing  every  day,  can  only  be  explained  by  compari- 
son to  a  bronco  in  a  blizzard.  Give  the  half-wild 
prairie  creature  the  bit,  and  it  will  carry  its  rider 
through  any  storm.  Jerk  it  to  right,  to  left,  east,  and 
west  till  it  loses  its  confidence,  and  the  bronco  is  as 
helpless  as  the  rider.  So  with  the  voyageur.  Crossing 
the  mountains  alone  in  his  own  way,  he  could  evade 
famine  and  danger  and  attack  by  lifting  a  brother 
trader's  cache — hidden  provisions — or  tarrying  in  In- 
dian lodges  till  game  crossed  his  path,  or  marrying  the 
daughter  of  a  hostile  chief,  or  creeping  so  quietly 


*  A  partner  in  trade  with  Crooks,  both  of  whom  lost  every- 
thing going  up  the  Missouri  in  Lisa's  wake. 


THREE  COMPANIES  IN  CONFLICT  21 

through  the  woods  neither  game  nor  Indian  scout 
could  detect  his  presence.  With  a  noisy  cavalcade  of 
sixty-four  all  this  was  impossible.  Broken  into  de- 
tachments, weak,  emaciated,  stripped  naked,  on  the 
verge  of  dementia  and  cannibalism,  now  shouting  to 
each  other  across  a  roaring  canon,  now  sinking  in  de- 
spair before  a  blind  wall,  the  overlanders  finally  reached 
Astoria  after  nearly  a  year's  wanderings. 

Mr.  Astor's  second  ship,  the  Beaver,  arrived  with 
re-enforcements  of  men  and  provisions.  More  posts 
were  established  inland.  After  several  futile  attempts, 
despatches  were  sent  overland  to  St.  Louis.  Under 
direction  of  Mr.  Hunt,  the  Beaver  sailed  for  Alaska 
to  trade  with  the  Russians.  Word  came  from  the 
North- West  forts  on  the  Upper  Columbia  of  war  with 
England.  Mr.  Astor's  third  ship,  the  Lark,  was 
wrecked.  Astoria  was  now  altogether  in  the  hands  of 
men  who  had  been  Nor'  Westers. 

And  what  was  the  alert  North- West  Company 
doing  ?  * 

*  Doings  in  the  North-West  camp  have  only  become  known 
of  late  from  the  daily  journals  of  two  North- West  partners — 
MacDonald  of  Garth,  whose  papers  were  made  public  by  a 
descendant  of  the  MacKenzies,  and  Alexander  Henry,  whose 
account  is  in  the  Ottawa  Library. 


CHAPTER   III 
THE  NOR'  WESTERS'  COUP 

" 'It  had  been  decided  in  council  at  Fort  William 
that  the  company  should  send  the  Isaac  Todd  to  the 
Columbia  River,  where  the  Americans  had  established 
Astoria,  and  that  a  party  should  proceed  from  Fort 
William  (overland)  to  meet  the  ship  on  the  coast" 
wrote  MacDonald  of  Garth,  a  North- West  partner,  for 
the  perusal  of  his  children. 

This  was  decided  at  the  North- West  council  of  1812, 
held  annually  on  the  shores  of  Lake  Superior.  It  was 
just  a  year  from  the  time  that  Thompson  had  discov- 
ered the  American  fort  in  the  hands  of  former  Nor* 
Westers.  At  this  meeting  Thompson's  report  must 
have  been  read. 

The  overland  party  was  to  he  led  by  the  two  part- 
ners, John  George  MacTavish  and  Alexander  Henry, 
the  sea  expedition  on  the  Isaac  Todd  by  Donald  Mac- 
Tavish, who  had  actually  been  appointed  governor  of 
the  American  fort  in  anticipation  of  victory.  On  the 
Isaac  Todd  also  went  MacDonald  of  Garth.* 

The  overland  expedition  was  to  thread  that  laby- 
rinth of  water-ways  connecting  Lake  Superior  and  the 

*  A  son  of  the  English  officer  of  the  Eighty-fourth  Regiment 
in  the  American  War  of  Independence. 
22 


THE  NOR'  WESTERS'  COUP  23 

Saskatchewan,  thence  across  the  plains  to  Athabasca, 
over  the  northern  Rockies,  past  Jasper  House,  through 
Yellow  Head  Pass,  and  down  half  the  length  of  the 
Columbia  through  Kootenay  plains  to  Astoria.  One 
has  only  to  recall  the  roaring  canons  of  the  northern 
Eockies,  with  their  sheer  cataracts  and  bottomless 
precipices,  to  realize  how  much  more  hazardous  this 
route  was  than  that  followed  by  Hunt  from  St.  Louis 
to  Astoria.  Hunt  had  to  cross  only  the  plains  and  the 
width  of  the  Rockies.  The  Nor'  Westers  not  only  did 
this,  but  passed  down  the  middle  of  the  Rockies  for 
nearly  a  thousand  miles. 

Before  doubling  the  Horn  the  Isaac  Todd  was  to 
sail  from  Quebec  to  England  for  convoy  of  a  war-ship. 
The  Nor'  Westers  naive  assurance  of  victory  was  only 
exceeded  by  their  utter  indifference  to  danger,  diffi- 
culty, and  distance  in  the  attainment  of  an  end.  In 
view  of  the  terror  which  the  Isaac  Todd  was  alleged  to 
have  inspired  in  MacDougalPs  mind,  it  is  interesting 
to  know  what  the  Nor'  Westers  thought  of  their  ship. 
"A  twenty-gun  letter  of  marque  with  a  mongrel  crew" 
writes  MacDonald  of  Garth,  "a  miserable  sailor  with 
a  miserable  commander  and  a  rascally  crew"  On  the 
way  out  MacDonald  transferred  to  the  British  convoy 
Raccoon,  leaving  the  frisky  old  Governor  MacTavish 
with  his  gay  barmaid  Jane  *  drinking  pottle  deep  on 
the  Isaac  Todd,  where  the  rightly  disgusted  captain 
was  not  on  speaking  terms  with  his  Excellency.  "  We 
were  nearly  six  weeks  before  we  could  double  Cape 
Horn,  and  were  driven  half-way  to  the  Cape  of  Good 

*  Jane  Barnes,  an  adventuress  from  Portsmouth,  the  first 
white  woman  on  the  Columbia. 


24:  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

Hope;  .  .  .  at  last  doubled  the  cape  under  topsails, 
.  .  *  the  deck  one  sheet  of  ice  for  six  weeks,  .  ,  .  our 
sails  one  frozen  sheet;  .  .  .  lost  sight  of  the  Isaac 
Todd  in  a  gale"  wrote  MacDonald  on  the  Eaccoon. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  Hunt's  overlanders  ar- 
rived at  Astoria  months  after  the  Pacific  Company's 
ship.  Such  swift  coasters  of  the  wilderness  were  the 
Nor'  Westers,  this  overland  party  came  sweeping  down 
the  Columbia,  ten  canoes  strong,  hale,  hearty,  sing- 
ing as  they  paddled,  a  month  before  the  Eaccoon  had 
come,  six  months  before  their  own  ship,  the  Isaac 
Todd. 

And  what  did  MacDougall  do?  Threw  open  his 
gates  in  welcome,  let  an  army  of  eighty  rivals  camp 
under  shelter  of  his  fort  guns,  demeaned  himself  into 
a  pusillanimous,  little,  running  fetch-and-carry  at  the 
beck  of  the  Nor'  Westers,  instead  of  keeping  sternly 
inside  his  fort,  starving  rivals  into  surrender,  or  train- 
ing his  cannon  upon  them  if  they  did  not  decamp. 

Alexander  Henry,  the  partner  at  the  head  of  these 
dauntless  Nor'  Westers,  says  their  provisions  were 
"nearly  all  gone."  But,  oh!  the  bragging  voyageurs 
told  those  quaking  Astorians  terrible  things  of  what  the 
Isaac  Todd  would  do.  There  were  to  be  British  con- 
voys and  captures  and  prize-money  and  prisoners  of 
war  carried  off  to  Sainte  Anne  alone  knew  where.  The 
American-born  scorned  these  exaggerated  yarns,  know- 
ing their  purpose,  but  not  so  MacDougall.  All  his 
pot-valiant  courage  sank  at  the  thought  of  the  Isaac 
Todd,  and  when  the  campers  ran  up  a  British  flag  he 
forbade  the  display  of  American  colours  above  Astoria. 
The  end  of  it  was  that  he  sold  out  Mr.  Astor's  interests 
at  forty  cents  on  the  dollar,  probably  salving  his  con- 


THE  NOR'  WESTERS'  COUP  25 

science  with  the  excuse  that  he  had  saved  that  percent- 
age of  property  from  capture  by  the  Raccoon. 

At  the  end  of  November  a  large  ship  was  sighted 
standing  in  over  the  bar  with  all  sails  spread  but  no 
ensign  out.  Three  shots  were  fired  from  Astoria. 
There  was  no  answer.  What  if  this  were  the  long-lost 
Mr.  Hunt  coming  back  from  Alaskan,  trade  on  the 
Beaver?  The  doughty  Nor?  Westers  hastily  packed 
their  furs,  ninety-two  bales  in  all,  and  sent  their  voy- 
ageurs  scampering  up-stream  to  hide  and  await  a  sig- 
nal. But  MacDougall  was  equal  to  the  emergency. 
He  launched  out  for  the  ship,  prepared  to  be  an  Amer- 
ican if  it  were  the  Beaver  with  Mr.  Hunt,  a  Nor* 
Wester  if  it  were  the  Raccoon  with  a  company  partner. 

It  was  the  Raccoon,  and  the  British  captain  ad- 
dressed the  Astorians  in  words  that  have  become  his- 
toric; "Is  this  the  fort  Tve  heard  so  much  about? 

D me,  I  could  batter  it  down  in  two  hours  with  a 

four-pounder!" 

Two  weeks  later  the  Union  Jack  was  hoisted  above 
Astoria,  with  traders  and  marines  drawn  up  under  arms 
to  fire  a  volley.  A  bottle  of  Madeira  was  broken  against 
the  flagstaff,  the  country  pronounced  a  British  posses- 
sion by  the  captain,  cheers  given,  and  eleven  guns  fired 
from  the  bastions. 

At  this  stage  all  accounts,  particularly  American 
accounts,  have  rung  down  the  curtain  on  the  catastro- 
phe, leaving  the  Nor'  Westers  intoxicated  with  success. 
But  another  act  was  to  complete  the  disasters  of  As- 
toria, for  the  very  excess  of  intoxication  brought  swift 
judgment  on  the  revelling  Nor'  Westers. 

The  Raccoon  left  on  the  last  day  of  1813.  Mac- 
Dougall had  been  appointed  partner  in  the  North- West 


20  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

Company,  and  the  other  Canadians  re-engagpd  under 
their  own  flag.  When  Hunt  at  last  arrived  in  the 
Pedler,  which  he  had  chartered  after  the  wreck  of 
Mr.  Aster's  third  vessel,  the  Lark,  it  was  too  late  to  do 
more  than  carry  away  those  Americans  still  loyal  to 
Mr.  Astor.  Farnham  was  left  at  Kamtchatka,  whence 
he  made  his  way  to  Europe.  The  others  were  captured 
off  California  and  they  afterward  scattered  to  all  parts 
of  the  world.  Early  in  April,  1814,  a  brigade  of  Nor' 
Westers,  led  by  MacDonald  of  Garth  and  the  younger 
MacTavish,  set  out  for  the  long  journey  across  the 
mountains  and  prairie  to  the  company's  headquarters 
at  Fort  William.  In  the  flotilla  of  ten  canoes  went 
many  of  the  old  Astorians.  Two  weeks  afterward  came 
the  belated  Isaac  Todd  with  the  Nor'  Westers'  white 
flag  at  its  foretop  and  the  dissolute  old  Governor  Mac- 
Tavish holding  a  high  carnival  of  riot  in  the  cabin* 

No  darker  picture  existe  than  that  of  Astoria — or 
Fort  George,  as  the  British  called  it — under  Governor 
MacTavish's  regime.  The  picture  is  from  the  hand  of 
a  North- West  partner  himself.  "Not  in  bed  till  2  A.  M. ; 
.  .  .  the  gentlemen  and  the  crew  all  drunk;  ...  fa- 
mous fellows  for  grog  they  are;  .  .  .  diced  for  articles 
belonging  to  Mr.  M./f  Alexander  Henry  had  written 
when  the  Raccoon  was  in  port ;  and  now  under  Gover- 
nor MacTavish's  vicious  example  every  pretence  to  de- 
cency was  discarded, 

"  Avec  les  loups  il  faut  hurler  "  was  a  common  say- 
ing among  Nor'  Westers,  and  perhaps  that  very  assimi- 
lation to  the  native  races  which  contributed  so  much  to 
success  also  contributed  to  the  trader's  undoing.  White- 
men  and  Indians  vied  with  each  other  in  mutual  de- 
basement. Chinook  and  Saxon  and  Frenchmen  alike 


THE  NOR'  WESTERS'  COUP  27 

lay  on  the  sand  sodden  with  corruption;  and  if  one 
died  from  carousals,  companions  weighted  neck  and 
feet  with  stones  and  pushed  the  corpse  into  the  river. 
Quarrels  broke  out  between  the  wassailing  governor 
and  the  other  partners.  Emboldened,  the  underlings 
and  hangers-on  indulged  in  all  sorts  of  theft.  "  All  the 
gentlemen  were  intoxicated,"  writes  one  who  was  pres- 
ent ;  seven  hours  rowing  one  mile,  innocently  states  the 
record  of  another  day,  the  tide  running  seven  feet  high 
past  the  fort. 

The  spring  rains  had  ceased.  Mountain  peaks 
emerged  from  the  empurpled  horizon  in  domes  of  opal 
above  the  clouds,  and  the  Columbia  was  running  its 
annual  mill-race  of  spring  floods,  waters  milky  from 
the  silt  of  countless  glaciers  and  turbulent  from  the 
rush  of  a  thousand  cataracts.  Governor  MacTavish  * 
and  Alexander  Henry  had  embarked  with  six  voyageurs 
to  cross  the  river.  A  blustering  wind  caught  the  sail. 
A  tidal  wave  pitched  amidships.  The  craft  filled  and 
sank  within  sight  of  the  fort. 

So  perished  the  conquerors  of  Astoria ! 

*  In  justice  to  the  many  descendants  of  the  numerous  clan 
MacTavish  in  the  service  of  the  fur  companies,  this  MacTavish 
should  be  distinguished  from  others  of  blameless  lives. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  ANCIENT   HUDSON'S  BAY   COMPANY   WAKENS   UP 

THOSE  eighty  f  Astorians  and  Nor'  Westers  who 
set  inland  with  their  ten  canoes  and  boats  under  pro- 
tection of  two  swivels  encountered  as  many  dangers  on 
the  long  trip  across  the  continent  as  they  had  left  at 
Fort  George. 

Following  the  wandering  course  of  the  Columbia, 
the  traders  soon  passed  the  international  boundary 
northward  into  the  Arrow  Lakes  with  their  towering 
sky-line  of  rampart  walls,  on  to  the  great  bend  of  the 
Columbia  where  the  river  becomes  a  tumultuous  tor- 
rent milky  with  glacial  sediment,  now  raving  through 
a  narrow  canon,  now  teased  into  a  white  whirlpool  by 
obstructing  rocks,  now  tumbling  through  vast  shadowy 
forests,  now  foaming  round  the  green  icy  masses  of 
some  great  glacier,  and  always  mountain-girt  by  the 
tent-like  peaks  of  the  eternal  snows. 

"A  plain,  unvarnished  tale,  my  dear  Belief  euille" 
wrote  the  mighty  MacDonald  of  Garth  in  his  eighty- 
sixth  year  for  a  son;  but  the  old  trader's  tale  needed 
no  varnish  of  rhetoric.  "  N  earing  the  mountains  we 
got  scarce  of  provisions;  .  .  .  bought  horses  for  beef. 
.  .  .  Here  (at  the  Great  Bend)  we  left  canoes  and  be- 

*  Some  say  seventy-four. 


ANCIENT  HUDSON'S  BAY  COMPANY  WAKENS  UP    29 

gan  a  mountain  pass  (Yellow  Head  Pass).  .  .  .  The 
river  meanders  much,  .  .  .  and  we  cut  across,  .  .  . 
holding  by  one  another's  hands,  .  .  .  wading  to  the 
hips  in  water,  dashing  in,  frozen  at  one  point,  thawed 
at  the  >next,  .  .  .  frozen  before  we  dashed  in,  .  .  .  our 
men  carrying  blankets  and  provisions  on  their  heads; 
.  .  .  four  days'  hard  work  before  we  got  to  Jasper 
House  at  the  source  of  the  Athabasca,  sometimes  camp- 
ing on  snow  twenty  feet  deep,  so  that  the  fires  we  made 
in  the  evening  were  fifteen  or  twenty  feet  below  us  in 
the  morning." 

They  had  now  crossed  the  mountains,  and  taking  to 
canoes  again  paddled  down-stream  to  the  portage  be- 
tween Athabasca  River  and  the  Saskatchewan.  Tramp- 
ing sixty  miles,  they  reached  Fort  Augustus  (Edmon- 
ton) on  the  Saskatchewan,  where  canoes  were  made  on 
the  spot,  and  the  voyageurs  launched  down-stream  a 
trifling  distance  of  two  thousand  miles  by  the  windings 
of  the  river,  past  Lake  Winnipeg  southward  to  Fort 
William,  the  Nor'  Westers'  headquarters  on  Lake  Su- 
perior. 

Here  the  capture  of  Astoria  was  reported,  and  bales 
to  the  value  of  a  million  dollars  in  modern  money  sent 
east  in  fifty  canoes  with  an  armed  guard  of  three  hun- 
dred men.*  Coasting  along  the  north  shore  of  Lake 
Superior,  the  voyageurs  came  to  the  Sault  and  found 
Mr.  Johnston's  establishment  a  scene  of  smoking 
ruins.  It  was  necessary  to  use  the  greatest  caution 
not  to  attract  the  notice  of  warring  parties  on  the 
Lakes. 

*  The  enormous  returns  made  up  largely  of  the  Astoria  cap- 
ture. The  unusually  large  guard  was  no  doubt  owing  to  the 
War  of  1812. 


30  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

"  Overhauled  a  canoe  going  eastward,  ...  a  Mack- 
inaw trader  and  four  Indians  with  a  dozen  fresh  Ameri- 
can scalps/'  writes  MacDonald,  showing  to  what  a  pass 
things  had  come.  Two  days  later  a  couple  of  boats 
were  overtaken  and  compelled  to  halt  by  a  shot  from 
MacDonald's  swivels.  The  strangers  proved  to  be  the 
escaping  crew  of  a  British  ship  which  had  been  captured 
by  two  American  schooners,  and  the  British  officer  bore 
bad  news.  The  American  schooners  were  now  on  the 
lookout  for  the  rich  prize  of  furs  being  taken  east 
in  the  North- West  canoes.  Slipping  under  the  nose 
of  these  schooners  in  the  dark,  the  officer  hurried  to 
Mackinac,  leaving  the  Nor'  Westers  hidden  in  the 
mouth  of  French  Eiver.  William  MacKay,  a  Nor* 
West  partner,  at  once  sallied  out  to  the  defence  of 
the  furs. 

Determined  to  catch  the  brigade,  one  schooner  was 
hovering  about  the  Sault,  the  other  cruising  into  the 
countless  recesses  of  the  north  shore.  Against  the  lat- 
ter the  Mackinaw  traders  directed  their  forces,  board- 
ing her,  and,  as  MacDonald  tells  with  brutal  frankness, 
"  pinning  the  crew  with  fixed  bayonets  to  the  deck/' 
Lying  snugly  at  anchor,  the  victors  awaited  the  com- 
ing of  the  other  unsuspecting  schooner,  let  her  cast  an- 
chor, bore  down  upon  her,  poured  in  a  broadside,  and 
took  both  schooners  to  Mackinac.  Freed  from  all  ap- 
prehension of  capture,  the  North- West  brigade  proceed- 
ed eastward  to  the  Ottawa  River,  and  without  further 
adventure  came  to  Montreal,  where  all  was  wild  confu- 
sion from  another  cause. 

At  the  very  time  when  war  endangered  the  entire 
route  of  the  Nor'  Westers  from  Montreal  to  the  Pacific, 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  awakened  from  its  long 


Indian  voyageurs  "packing"  over  long  portage,  each  packet 
containing  from  fifty  to  one  hundred  pounds. 


ANCIENT  HUDSON'S  BAY  COMPANY  WAKENS  UP     31 

sleep.  While  Mr.  Astor  was  pushing  his  schemes  in 
the  United  States,  Lord  Selkirk  was  formulating  plans 
for  the  control  of  all  Canada's  fur  trade.  Like  Mr. 
Astor,  he  too  had  been  the  guest  at  the  North- West  ban- 
quets in  the  Beaver  Club,  Montreal,  and  had  heard 
fabulous  things  from  those  magnates  of  the  north  about 
wealth  made  in  the  fur  trade.  Eeturning  to  England, 
Lork  Selkirk  bought  up  enough  stock  of  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Company  to  give  him  full  control,  and  secured 
from  the  shareholders  an  enormous  grant  of  land 
surrounding  the  mouths  of  the  Red  and  Assiniboine 
rivers. 

Where  the  Assiniboine  joins  the  northern  Red  were 
situated  Fort  Douglas  (later  Fort  Garry,  now  Winni- 
peg), the  headquarters  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company, 
and  Fort  Gibraltar,  the  North- West  post  whence  sup- 
plies were  sent  all  the  way  from  the  Mandans  on  the 
Missouri  to  the  Eskimo  in  the  arctics. 

Not  satisfied  with  this  coup,  Lord  Selkirk  engaged 
Colin  Robertson,  an  old  Nor'  Wester,  to  gather  a  bri- 
gade of  voyageurs  two  hundred  strong  at  Montreal  and 
proceed  up  the  Nor'  Westers'  route  to  Athabasca,  Mac- 
Kenzie  River,  and  the  Rockies.  This  was  the  noisy, 
blustering,  bragging  company  of  gaily-bedizened  fel- 
lows that  had  turned  the  streets  of  Montreal  into  a 
roistering  booth  when  the  Astorians  came  to  the  end 
of  their  long  eastward  journey.  Poor,  fool-happy  rev- 
ellers !  Eighteen  of  them  died  of  starvation  in  the  far, 
cold  north,  owing  to  the  conflict  between  Fort  Doug- 
las and  Gibraltar,  which  delayed  supplies. 

Beginning  in  1811,  Lord  Selkirk  poured  a  stream 
of  colonists  to  his  newly-acquired  territory  by  way  of 
Churchill  and  York  Factory  on  Hudson  Bay.  These 


32  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

people  were  given  lands,  and  in  return  expected  to  de- 
fend the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  from  Nor*  Westers, 
The  Nor'  Westers  struck  back  by  discouraging  the  col- 
onists, shipping  them  free  out  of  the  country,  and  get- 
ting possession  of  their  arms. 

Miles  MacDonell,  formerly  of  the  King's  Royal  Regi- 
ment, New  York,  governor  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Com- 
pany at  Fort  Douglas,  at  once  issued  proclamations 
forbidding  Indians  to  trade  furs  with  Nor'  Westers 
and  ordering  Nor*  Westers  from  the  country.  On  the 
strength  of  these  proclamations  two  or  three  outlying 
North- West  forts  were  destroyed  and  North- West  fur 
brigades  rifled.  Duncan  Cameron,*  the  North-West 
partner  at  Fort  Gibraltar,  countered  by  letting  his 
Bois-BruUs,  a  ragged  half-breed  army  of  wild  plain 
rangers  under  Cuthbert  Grant,  canter  across  the  two 
miles  that  separated  the  rival  forts,  and  pour  a  vol- 
ley of  musketry  into  the  Hudson  Bay  houses.  To 
save  the  post  for  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company,  Miles 
MacDonell  gave  himself  up  and  was  shipped  out  of 
the  country. 

But  the  Hudson's  Bay  fort  was  only  biding  its  time 
till  the  valiant  North- West  defenders  had  scattered  to 
their  winter  posts.  Then  an  armed  party  seized  Duncan 
Cameron  not  far  from  the  North- West  fort,  and  with 
pistol  cocked  by  one  man,  publicly  horsewhipped  the 
Nor'  Wester.  Afterward,  when  Semple,  the  new  Hud- 
son's Bay  governor,  was  absent  from  Fort  Douglas  and 
could  not  therefore  be  held  responsible  for  consequences, 
the  Hudson's  Bay  men,  led  by  the  same  Colin  Robertson 

*  An  antecedent  of  the  late  Sir  Roderick  Cameron  of  New 
York. 


ANCIENT  HUDSON'S  BAY  COMPANY  WAKENS  UP    33 

who  had  brought  the  large  brigade  from  Montreal, 
inarched  across  the  prairie  to  Fort  Gibraltar,  captured 
Mr.  Cameron,  plundered  all  the  Nor'  Westers'  stores, 
and  burned  the  fort  to  the  ground.  By  way  of  retalia- 
tion for  MacDonelPs  expulsion,  the  North- West  partner 
was  shipped  down  to  Hudson  Bay,  where  he  might  as 
well  have  been  on  Devil's  Island  for  all  the  chance  of 
escape. 

One  company  at  fault  as  often  as  the  other,  similar 
outrages  were  perpetrated  in  all  parts  of  the  north  fur 
country,  the  blood  of  rival  traders  being  spilt  with- 
out a  qualm  of  conscience  or  thought  of  results.  The 
effect  of  this  conflict  among  white  men  on  the  blood- 
thirsty red-skins  one  may  guess.  The  Bois-Brules  were 
clamouring  for  Cuthbert  Grant's  permission  to  wipe 
the  English — meaning  the  Hudson's  Bay  men — off  the 
earth;  and  the  Swampy  Crees  and  Saulteaux  undei? 
Chief  Peguis  were  urging  Governor  Semple  to  let 
them  defend  the  Hudson's  Bay — meaning  kill  the  Nor* 
Westers. 

The  crisis  followed  sharp  on  the  destruction  of 
Fort  Gibraltar.  That  post  had  sent  all  supplies  to 
North- West  forts.  If  Fort  Douglas  of  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Company,  past  which  North- West  canoes  must  pad- 
dle to  turn  westward  to  the  plains,  should  intercept  the 
incoming  brigade  of  Nor'  Westers'  supplies,  what 
would  become  of  the  two  thousand  North- West  traders 
and  voyageurs  and  engages  inland  ?  Whether  the  Hud- 
son's Bay  had  such  intentions  or  not,  the  Nor'  Westers 
were  determined  to  prevent  the  possibility. 

Like  the  red  cross  that  called  ancient  clans  to  arms, 
scouts  went  scouring  across  the  plains  to  rally  the  Bois- 
Brules  from  Portage  la  Prairie  and  Souris  and  Qu'Ap- 
4 


34  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

pelle.*  Led  by  Cuthbert  Grant,  they  skirted  north  of 
the  Hudson's  Bay  post  to  meet  and  disembark  supplies 
above  Fort  Douglas.  It  was  but  natural  for  the  settlers 
to  mistake  this  armed  cavalcade,  red  with  paint  and 
chanting  war-songs,  for  hostiles. 

Rushing  to  Fort  Douglas,  the  settlers  gave  the 
alarm.  Ordering  a  field-piece  to  follow,  Governor 
Semple  marched  out  with  a  little  army  of  twenty-eight 
Hudson's  Bay  men.  The  Nor'  Westers  thought  that  he 
meant  to  obstruct  their  way  till  his  other  forces  had 
captured  their  coming  canoes.  The  Hudson's  Bay 
thought  that  Cuthbert  Grant  meant  to  attack  the  Sel- 
kirk settlers. 

It  was  in  the  evening  of  June  19,  1816.  The  two 
parties  met  at  the  edge  of  a  swamp  beside  a  cluster  of 
trees,  since  called  Seven  Oaks.  Nor'  Westers  say  that 
Governor  Semple  caught  the  bridle  of  their  scout  and 
tried  to  throw  him  from  his  horse.  The  Hudson's  Bay 
say  that  the  governor  had  no  sooner  got  within  range 
than  the  half-breed  scout  leaped  down  and  fired  from 
the  shelter  of  his  horse,  breaking  Semple's  thigh. 

It  is  well  known  how  the  first  blood  of  battle  has 
the  same  effect  on  all  men  of  whatever  race.  The  hu- 
man is  eclipsed  by  that  brute  savagery  which  comes 
down  from  ages  when  man  was  a  creature  of  prey.  In 
a  trice  twenty-one  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  men  lay  dead. 
While  Grant  had  turned  to  obtain  carriers  to  bear  the 
wounded  governor  off  the  field,  poor  Semple  was  bru- 

*  More  of  the  voyageurs'  romance ;  named  because  of  a  voice 
heard  calling  and  calling  across  the  lake  as  voyageurs  entered 
the  valley — said  to  be  the  spirit  of  an  Indian  girl  calling  her 
lover,  though  prosaic  sense  explains  it  was  the  echo  of  the 
voyageura*  song  among  the  hills. 


ANCIENT  HUDSON'S  BAY  COMPANY  WAKENS  UP    35 

tally  murdered  by  one  of  the  Deschamps  family,  who 
ran  from  body  to  body,  perpetrating  the  crimes  of 
ghouls.  It  was  in  vain  for  Grant  to  expostulate.  The 
wild  blood  of  a  savage  race  had  been  roused.  The  soft 
velvet  night  of  the  summer  prairie,  with  the  winds 
crooning  the  sad  monotone  of  a  limitless  sea,  closed 
over  a  scene  of  savages  drunk  with  slaughter,  of  men 
gone  mad  with  the  madness  of  murder,  of  warriors 
thinking  to  gain  courage  by  drinking  the  blood  of  the 
slain. 

Grant  saved  the  settlers'  lives  by  sending  them 
down-stream  to  Lake  Winnipeg,  where  dwelt  the  friend- 
ly Chief  Peguis.  On  the  river  they  met  the  indomitable 
Miles  MacDonell,  posting  back  to  resume  authority.  He 
brought  news  that  must  have  been  good  cheer.  Moved 
by  the  expelled  governor's  account  of  disorders,  Lord 
Selkirk  was  hastening  north,  armed  with  the  authority 
of  a  justice  of  the  peace,  escorted  by  soldiers  in  full 
regalia  as  became  his  station,  with  cannon  mounted 
on  his  barges  and  stores  of  munition  that  ill  agreed 
with  the  professions  of  a  peaceful  justice. 

The  time  has  gone  past  for  quibbling  as  to  the 
earl's  motives  in  pushing  north  armed  like  a  lord  of 
war.  MacDonell  hastened  back  and  met  him  with  his 
army  of  Des  Meurons  *  at  the  Sault.  In  August  Lord 
Selkirk  appeared  before  Fort  William  with  uniformed 
soldiers  in  eleven  boats.  The  justice  of  the  peace  set 
his  soldiers  digging  trenches  opposite  the  Nor'  West- 
ers' fort.  As  for  the  Nor'  Westers,  they  had  had 
enough  of  blood.  They  capitulated  without  one  blow. 
Selkirk  took  full  possession. 

*  Continental  soldiers  disbanded  after  the  Napoleonic  wars. 


36  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

Six  months  later  (1817),  when  ice  had  closed  the 
rivers,  he  sent  Captain  d'Orsennens  overland  westward 
to  Bed  Kiver,  where  Fort  Douglas  was  captured  back 
one  stormy  winter  night  by  the  soldiers  scaling  the 
fort  walls  during  a  heavy  snowfall.  The  conflict  had 
been  just  as  ruthless  on  the  Saskatchewan.  Nor'  West- 
ers were  captured  as  they  disembarked  to  pass  Grand 
Rapids  and  shipped  down  to  York  Factory,  where 
Franklin  the  explorer  saw  four  Nor'  Westers  maltreat- 
ed. One  of  them  was  the  same  John  George  MacTavish 
who  had  helped  to  capture  Astoria ;  another,  Frobisher, 
a  partner,  was  ultimately  done  to  death  by  the  abuse. 
The  Deschamps  murderers  of  Seven  Oaks  fled  south, 
where  their  crimes  brought  terrible  vengeance  from 
American  traders. 

Victorious  all  along  the  line,  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Company  were  in  a  curious  quandary.  Suits  enough 
were  pressing  in  the  courts  to  ruin  both  companies ;  and 
for  the  most  natural  reason  in  the  world,  neither  Hud- 
son Bay  nor  Nor'  Wester  could  afford  to  have  the  truth 
told  and  the  crimes  probed.  There  was  only  one  way 
out  of  the  dilemma.  In  March,  1821,  the  companies 
amalgamated  under  the  old  title  of  Hudson's  Bay.  In 
April,  1822,  a  new  fort  was  built  half-way  between  the 
sites  of  Gibraltar  and  Fort  Douglas,  and  given  the  new 
name  of  Fort  Garry  by  Sir  George  Simpson,  the  gov- 
ernor, to  remove  all  feeling  of  resentment.  The  thou- 
sand men  thrown  out  of  employment  by  the  union  at 
once  crossed  the  line  and  enlisted  with  American 
traders. 

The  Hudson's  Bay  was  now  strong  with  the  strength 
that  comes  from  victorious  conflict — so  strong,  indeed, 
that  it  not  only  held  the  Canadian  field,  but  in  spite 


ANCIENT  HUDSON'S  BAY  COMPANY  WAKENS  UP     37 

of  the  American  law  *  forbidding  British  traders  in 
the  United  States,  reached  as  far  south  as  Utah  and 
the  Missouri,  where  it  once  more  had  a  sharp  brush  with 
lusty  rivals. 

*  A  law  that  could  not,  of  course,  be  enforced,  except  as  to 
the  building  of  permanent  forts,  in  regions  beyond  the  reach  of 
law's  enforcement. 


CHAPTER   V 

MR.  ASTOR'S  COMPANY  ENCOUNTERS  NEW  OPPONENTS 

THAT  Andrew  Henry  whom  Lisa  had  sought  when 
he  pursued  the  Astorians  up  the  Missouri  continued  to 
be  dogged  by  misfortune  on  the  west  side  of  the  moun- 
tains. Game  was  scarce  and  his  half-starving  follow- 
ers were  scattered,  some  to  the  British  posts  in  the 
north,  some  to  the  Spaniards  in  the  south,  and  some 
to  the  nameless  graves  of  the  mountains.  Henry  forced 
his  way  back  over  the  divide  and  met  Lisa  in  the  Ari- 
cara  country.  The  British  war  broke  out  and  the  Mis- 
souri Company  were  compelled  to  abandon  the  danger- 
ous territory  of  the  Blackfeet,  who  could  purchase  arms 
from  the  British  traders,  raid  the  Americans,  and 
scurry  back  to  Canada. 

When  Lisa  died  in  1820  more  than  three  hundred 
Missouri  men  were  again  in  the  mountains;  but  they 
suffered  the  same  ill  luck.  Jones  and  ImmePs  party 
were  annihilated  by  the  Blackfeet;  and  Pilcher,  who 
succeeded  to  Lisa's  position  and  dauntlessly  crossed 
over  to  the  Columbia,  had  all  his  supplies  stolen, 
reaching  the  Hudson's  Bay  post,  Fort  Colville,  almost 
destitute.  The  British  rivals  received  him  with 
that  hospitality  for  which  they  were  renowned  when 
trade  was  not  involved,  and  gave  him  escort  up  the 
Columbia,  down  the  Athabasca  and  Saskatchewan  to 
38 


ASTOE  ENCOUNTERS  NEW  OPPONENTS          39 

Red  Kiver,  thence  overland  to  the  Mandan  country  and 
St.  Louis. 

These  two  disasters  marked  the  wane  of  the  Mis- 
souri Company. 

But  like  the  shipwrecked  sailor,  no  sooner  safe  on 
land  than  he  must  to  sea  again,  the  indomitable  Andrew 
Henry  linked  his  fortunes  with  General  Ashley  of  St. 
Louis.  Gathering  to  the  new  standard  Campbell, 
Bridger,  Fitzpatrick,  Beckworth,  Smith,  and  the  Sub- 
lettes — men  who  made  the  Rocky  Mountain  trade 
famous — Ashley  and  Henry  led  one  hundred  men  to 
the  mountains  the  first  year  and  two  hundred  the 
next.  In  that  time  not  less  than  twenty-five  lives  were 
lost  among  Aricaras  and  Blackfeet.  Few  pelts  were' 
obtained  and  the  expeditions  were  a  loss. 

But  in  1824  came  a  change.  Smith  met  Hudson's 
Bay  trappers  loaded  with  beaver  pelts  in  the  Columbia 
basin,  west  of  the  Rockies.  They  had  become  separated 
from  their  leader,  Alexander  Ross,  an  old  Astorian. 
Details  of  this  bargain  will  never  be  known;  but  when 
Smith  came  east  he  had  the  Hudson's  Bay  furs.  This 
was  the  first  brush  between  Rocky  Mountain  men  and 
the  Hudson's  Bay,  and  the  mountain  trappers  scored. 

Henceforth,  to  save  time,  the  active  trappers  met 
their  supplies  annually  at  a  rendezvous  in  the  moun- 
tains, in  Pierre's  Hole,  a  broad  valley  below  the  Tetons, 
or  Jackson's  Hole,  east  of  the  former,  or  Ogden's  Hole 
at  Salt  Lake.  Seventeen  Rocky  Mountain  men  had  been 
massacred  by  the  Snake  Indians  in  the  Columbia  basin ; 
but  that  did  not  deter  General  Ashley  himself  from 
going  up  the  Platte,  across  the  divide  to  Salt  Lake. 
Here  he  found  Peter  Ogden,  a  Hudson's  Bay  trapper, 
with  an  enormous  prize  of  beaver  pelts.  When  the  Hud- 


40  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

son's  Bay  man  left  Salt  Lake,  he  had  no  furs ;  and  when 
General  Ashley  came  away,  his  packers  were  laden  with 
a  quarter  of  a  million  dollars  worth  of  pelts.  This 
was  the  second  brush  between  Rocky  Mountain  and 
Hudson's  Bay,  and  again  the  mountaineers  scored. 

The  third  encounter  was  more  to  the  credit  of  both 
companies.  After  three  years'  wanderings,  Smith 
found  himself  stranded  and  destitute  at  the  British  post 
of  Fort  Vancouver.  Fifteen  of  his  men  had  been  killed, 
his  horses  taken  and  peltries  stolen.  The  Hudson's  Bay 
sent  a  punitive  force  to  recover  his  property,  gave  him 
a  $20,000  draft  for  the  full  value  of  the  recovered  furs, 
and  sent  him  up  the  Columbia.  Thenceforth  Rocky 
Mountain  trappers  and  Hudson's  Bay  respected  each 
other's  rights  in  the  valley  of  the  Columbia,  but  south- 
ward the  old  code  prevailed.  Fitzpatrick,  a  Rocky 
Mountain  trader,  came  on  the  same  poor  Peter  Ogden 
at  Salt  Lake  trading  with  the  Indians,  and  at  once 
plied  the  argument  of  whisky  so  actively  that  the  furs 
destined  for  Red  River  went  over  the  mountains  to  St. 
Louis. 

The  trapper  probably  never  heard  of  a  Nemesis; 
but  a  curious  retribution  seemed  to  follow  on  the  heels 
of  outrage. 

Lisa  had  tried  to  balk  the  Astorians,  and  the  Mis- 
souri Company  went  down  before  Indian  hostility. 
The  Nor'  Westers  jockeyed  the  Astorians  out  of  their 
possessions  and  were  in  league  with  murderers  at  the 
massacre  of  Seven  Oaks;  but  the  Nor*  Westers  were 
jockeyed  out  of  existence  by  the  Hudson's  Bay  under 
Lord  Selkirk.  The  Hudson's  Bay  had  been  guilty  of 
rank  outrage — particularly  on  the  Saskatchewan,  where 
North- West  partners  were  seized,  manacled,  and  sent 


ASTOB  ENCOUNTERS  NEW  OPPONENTS         41 

to  a  wilderness — and  now  the  Hudson's  Bay  were  cheat- 
ed, cajoled,  overreached  by  the  Kocky  Mountain  trap- 
pers. And  the  Rocky  Mountain  trappers,  in  their  turn, 
met  a  rival  that  could  outcheat  their  cheatery. 

In  1831  the  mountains  were  overrun  with  trappers 
from  all  parts  of  America.  Men  from  every  State  in 
the  Union,  those  restless  spirits  who  have  pioneered 
every  great  movement  of  the  race,  turned  their  faces 
to  the  wilderness  for  furs  as  a  later  generation  was  to 
scramble  for  gold. 

In  the  summer  of  1832,  when  the  hunters  came  down 
to  Pierre's  Hole  for  their  supplies,  there  were  trappers 
who  had  never  before  summered  away  from  Detroit 
and  Mackinaw  and  Hudson  Bay.*  There  were  half- 
wild  Frenchmen  from  Quebec  who  had  married  In- 
dian wives  and  cast  off  civilization  as  an  ill-fitting 
garment.  There  were  Indian  hunters  with  the  mel- 
low, rhythmic  tones  that  always  betray  native  blood. 
There  were  lank  New  Englanders  under  Wyeth  of  Bos- 
ton, erect  as  a  mast  pole,  strong  of  jaw,  angular  of  mo- 
tion, taking  clumsily  to  buckskins.  There  were  the 
Rocky  Mountain  men  in  tattered  clothes,  with  unkempt 
hair  and  long  beards,  and  a  trick  of  peering  from  their 
bushy  brows  like  an  enemy  from  ambush.  There  were 
probably  odd  detachments  from  Captain  Bonneville's 
adventurers  on  the  Platte,  where  a  gay  army  adventurer 
was  trying  his  luck  as  fur  trader  and  explorer.  And 
there  was  a  new  set  of  men,  not  yet  weather-worn  by 
the  wilderness,  alert,  watchful,  ubiquitous,  scattering 
themselves  among  all  groups  where  they  could  hear 
everything,  see  all,  tell  nothing,  always  shadowing  the 
Rocky  Mountain  men  who  knew  every  trail  of  the  wilds 

*  For  example,  the  Deschamps  of  Red  River. 


42  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

and  should  be  good  pilots  to  the  best  hunting-grounds. 
By  the  middle  of  July  all  business  had  been  completed, 
and  the  trappers  spent  a  last  night  round  camp-fires, 
spinning  yarns  of  the  hunt. 

Early  in  the  morning  when  the  Rocky  Mountain 
men  were  sallying  from  the  valley,  they  met  a  cavalcade 
of  one  hundred  and  fifty  Blackfeet.  Each  party  halted 
to  survey  its  opponent.  In  less  than  ten  years  the 
Rocky  Mountain  men  had  lost  more  than  seventy  com- 
rades among  hostiles.  Even  now  the  Indians  were 
flourishing  a  flag  captured  from  murdered  Hudson's 
Bay  hunters. 

The  number  of  whites  disconcerted  the  Indians. 
Their  warlike  advance  gave  place  to  friendliness.  One 
chief  came  forward  with  the  hand  of  comity  extended. 
The  whites  were  not  deceived.  Many  a  time  had  Rocky 
Mountain  trappers  been  lured  to  their  death  by  such 
overtures. 

No  excuse  is  offered  for  the  hunters.  The  code  of 
the  wilderness  never  lays  the  unction  of  a  hypocritical 
excuse  to  conscience.  The  trappers  sent  two  scouts  to 
parley  with  the  detested  enemy.  One  trapper,  with  In- 
dian blood  in  his  veins  and  Indian  thirst  for  the  avenge- 
ment  of  a  kinsman's  death  in  his  heart,  grasped  the 
chiefs  extended  hand  with  the  clasp  of  a  steel  trap. 
On  the  instant  the  other  scout  fired.  The  powerless 
chief  fell  dead ;  and  using  their  horses  as  a  breastwork, 
the  Blackfeet  hastily  threw  themselves  behind  some 
timber,  cast  up  trenches,  and  shot  from  cover. 

All  the  trappers  at  the  rendezvous  spurred  to  the 
fight,  priming  guns,  casting  off  valuables,  making  their 
wills  as  they  rode.  The  battle  lasted  all  day;  and  when 
under  cover  of  night  the  Indians  withdrew,  twelve  men 


ASTOR  ENCOUNTERS  NEW  OPPONENTS    43 

lay  dead  on  the  trappers'  side,  as  many  more  were 
wounded;  and  the  Blackfeet's  loss  was  twice  as  great. 
For  years  this  tribe  exacted  heavy  atonement  for  the 
death  of  warriors  behind  the  trenches  of  Pierre's 
Hole. 

Leaving  Pierre's  Hole  the  mountaineers  scattered 
to  their  rocky  fastnesses,  but  no  sooner  had  they  pitched 
camp  on  good  hunting-grounds  than  the  strangers  who 
had  shadowed  them  at  the  rendezvous  came  up.  Break- 
ing camp,  the  Kocky  Mountain  men  would  steal  away 
by  new  and  unknown  passes  to  another  valley.  A  day 
or  two  later,  having  followed  by  tent-poles  dragging 
the  ground,  or  brushwood  broken  by  the  passing  pack- 
ers, the  pertinacious  rivals  would  reappear.  This  went 
on  persistently  for  three  months. 

Infuriated  by  such  tactics,  the  mountaineers 
planned  to  lead  the  spies  a  dance.  Plunging  into 
the  territory  of  hostiles  they  gave  their  pursuers  the 
slip.  Neither  party  probably  intended  that  matters 
should  become  serious ;  but  that  is  always  the  fault  of 
the  white  man  when  he  plays  the  dangerous  game  of 
war  with  Indians.  The  spying  party  was  ambushed,  the 
leader  slain,  his  flesh  torn  from  his  body  and  his  skele- 
ton thrown  into  the  river.  A  few  months  later  the 
Rocky  Mountain  traders  paid  for  this  escapade.  Fitz- 
patrick,  the  same  trapper  who  had  "lifted"  Ogden's 
furs  and  led  this  game  against  the  spies,  was  robbed 
among  Indians  instigated  by  white  men  of  the  American 
Fur  Company.  This  marked  the  beginning  of  the  end 
with  the  Rocky  Mountain  trappers. 

The  American  Fur  Company,  which  Mr.  Astor  had 
organized  and  stuck  to  through  good  repute  and  evil 
repute,  was  now  officered  by  Eamsay  Crooks  and  Farn- 


44:  THE  STOEY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

ham  and  Robert  Stuart,  who  had  remained  loyal  to  Mr. 
Astor  in  Astoria  and  been  schooled  in  a  discipline  that 
offered  no  quarter  to  enemies.  The  purchase  of  the 
Mackinaw  Company  gave  the  American  Company  all 
those  posts  between  the  Great  Lakes  and  the  height  of 
land  dividing  the  Mississippi  and  Missouri.  When 
Congress  excluded  foreign  traders  in  1816,  all  the  Nor' 
Westers'  posts  south  of  the  boundary  fell  to  the  Ameri- 
can Fur  Company;  and  sturdy  old  Nor'  Westers,  who 
had  been  thrown  out  by  the  amalgamation  with  the 
Hudson's  Bay,  also  added  to  the  Americans'  strength. 
Kenneth  MacKenzie,  with  Laidlaw,  Lament,  and  Kipp, 
had  a  line  of  posts  from  Green  Bay  to  the  Missouri 
held  by  an  American  to  evade  the  law,  but  known  as 
the  Columbia  Company. 

This  organization*  the  American  Fur  Company 
bought  out,  placing  MacKenzie  at  the  mouth  of  the  Yel- 
lowstone, where  he  built  Fort  Union  and  became  the 
Pooh-Bah  of  the  whole  region,  living  in  regal  style  like 
his  ancestral  Scottish  chiefs.  "  King  of  the  Missouri  " 
white  men  called  him,  "  big  Indian  me  "  the  Blackfeet 
said ;  and  "  big  Indian  me  "  he  was  to  them,  for  he  was 
the  first  trader  to  win  both  their  friendship  and  the 
Crows'. 

Here  MacKenzie  entertained  Prince  Maximilian  of 
Wied  and  Catlin  the  artist  and  Audubon  the  naturalist, 
and  had  as  his  constant  companion  Hamilton,  an  Eng- 
lish nobleman  living  in  disguise  and  working  for  the 
fur  company.  Many  an  unmeant  melodrama  was  en- 
acter  under  the  walls  of  Union  in  MacKenzie's  reign. 

Once  a  free  trapper  came  floating  down  the  Mis- 

*  Chittenden. 


ASTOR  ENCOUNTERS  NEW  OPPONENTS    45 

Bouri  with  his  canoe  full  of  beaver-pelts,  which  he 
quickly  exchanged  for  the  gay  attire  to  be  obtained  at 
Fort  Union.  Oddly  enough,  though  the  fellow  was  a 
French-Canadian,  he  had  long,  flaxen  hair,  of  which  he 
was  inordinately  vain.  Strutting  about  the  court-yard, 
feeling  himself  a  very  prince  of  importance,  he  saw 
MacKenzie's  pretty  young  Indian  wife.  Each  paid  the 
other  the  tribute  of  adoration  that  was  warmer  than 
it  was  wise.  The  denouement  was  a  vision  of  the  flaxen- 
haired  Siegfried  sprinting  at  the  top  of  his  speed 
through  the  fort  gate,  with  the  irate  MacKenzie  flour- 
ishing a  flail  to  the  rear.  The  matter  did  not  end  here. 
The  outraged  Frenchman  swore  to  kill  MacKenzie  on 
sight,  and  haunted  the  fort  gates  with  a  loaded  rifle 
till  MacKenzie  was  obliged  to  hire  a  mulatto  servant  to 
"wing"  the  fellow  with  a  shot  in  the  shoulder,  when 
he  was  brought  into  the  fort,  nursed  back  to  health,  and 
sent  away. 

At  another  time  two  Kocky  Mountain  trappers  built 
an  opposition  fort  just  below  Union  and  lay  in  wait 
for  the  coming  of  the  Blackf eet  to  trade  with  the  Amer- 
ican Fur  Company.  MacKenzie  posted  a  lookout  on  his 
bastion.  The  moment  the  Indians  were  descried,  out 
sallied  from  Fort  Union  a  band  in  full  regalia,  with 
drum  and  trumpet  and  piccolo  and  fife — wonders  that 
would  have  lured  the  astonished  Indians  to  perdition. 
Behind  the  band  came  gaudy  presents  for  the  savages, 
and  what  was  not  supposed  to  be  in  the  Indian  country 
— liquor.  When  these  methods  failed  to  outbuy  rivals, 
MacKenzie  did  not  hesitate  to  pay  twelve  dollars  for 
a  beaver-skin  not  worth  two.  The  Rocky  Mountain 
trappers  were  forced  to  capitulate,  and  their  post 
passed  over  to  the  American  Fur  Company. 


46  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

In  the  ruins  of  their  post  was  enacted  a  fitting  finale 
to  the  turbulent  conflicts  of  the  American  traders.  The 
Deschamps  family,  who  had  perpetrated  the  worst 
butcheries  on  the  field  of  Seven  Oaks,  in  the  fight  be- 
tween Hudson's  Bay  and  Nor'  Westers,  had  acted  as  in- 
terpreters for  the  Rocky  Mountain  trappers.  Boast- 
ful of  their  murderous  record  in  Canada,  the  father, 
mother,  and  eight  grown  children  were  usually  so  vio- 
lent in  their  carousals  that  Hamilton,  the  English 
gentleman,  used  to  quiet  their  outrage  and  prevent 
trouble  by  dropping  laudanum  in  their  cups.  Once  they 
slept  so  heavily  that  the  whole  fort  was  in  a  panic  lest 
their  sleep  lasted  to  eternity;  but  the  revellers  came 
to  life  defiant  as  ever.  At  Union  was  a  very  handsome 
young  half-breed  fellow  by  the  name  of  Gardepie,  whose 
life  the  Deschamps  harpies  attempted  to  take  from 
sheer  jealousy  and  love  of  crime.  Joined  by  two  free 
trappers,  Gardepie  killed  the  elder  Deschamps  one 
morning  at  breakfast  with  all  the  gruesome  mutilation 
of  Indian  custom.  He  at  the  same  time  wounded  a 
younger  son.  Spurred  by  the  hag-like  mother  and 
nerved  to  the  deed  with  alcohol,  the  Deschamps  under- 
took to  avenge  their  father's  death  by  killing  all  the 
whites  of  the  fur  post.  One  man  had  fallen  when  the 
alarm  was  carried  to  Fort  Union. 

Twice  had  the  Deschamps  robbed  Fort  Union. 
Many  trappers  had  been  assassinated  by  a  Deschamps. 
Indians  had  been  flogged  by  them  for  no  other  purpose 
than  to  inflict  torture.  Beating  on  the  doors  of  Fort 
Union,  the  wife  of  their  last  victim  called  out  that  the 
Deschamps  were  on  the  war-path. 

The  traders  of  Fort  Union  solemnly  raised  hands 
and  took  an  oath  to  exterminate  the  murderous  clan. 


ASTOR  ENCOUNTERS  NEW  OPPONENTS    47 

The  affair  had  gone  beyond  MacKenzie's  control.  Seiz- 
ing cannon  and  ammunition,  the  traders  crossed  the 
prairie  to  the  abandoned  fort  of  the  Rocky  Mountain 
trappers,  where  the  murderers  were  intrenched.  All 
valuables  were  removed  from  the  fort.  Time  was  given 
for  the  family  to  prepare  for  death.  Then  the  guns 
were  turned  on  the  house.  Suddenly  that  old  harpy  of 
crime,  the  mother,  rushed  out,  holding  forward  the  In- 
dian pipe  of  peace  and  begging  for  mercy. 

She  got  all  the  mercy  that  she  had  ever  given,  and 
fell  shot  through  the  heart. 

At  last  the  return  firing  ceased.  Who  would  enter 
and  learn  if  the  Deschamps  were  all  dead  ?  Treachery 
was  feared.  The  assailants  set  fire  to  the  fort.  In  the 
light  of  the  flames  one  man  was  espied  crouching  in  the 
bastion.  A  trader  rushed  forward  exultant  to  shoot 
the  last  of  the  Deschamps ;  but  a  shot  from  the  bastion 
Bent  him  leaping  five  feet  into  the  air  to  fall  back  dead, 
and  a  yell  of  fiendish  victory  burst  from  the  burning 
tower.* 

Again  the  assailants  fired  a  volley.  No  answering 
shot  came  from  the  fort.  Rushing  through  the  smoke 
the  traders  found  Frangois  Deschamps  backed  up  in 
a  corner  like  a  beast  at  bay,  one  wrist  broken  and  all 
ammunition  gone.  A  dozen  rifle-shots  cracked  sharp. 
The  fellow  fell  and  his  body  was  thrown  into  the 
flames.  The  old  mother  was  buried  without  shroud 
or  coffin  in  the  clay  bank  of  the  river.  A  young  boy 
mortally  wounded  was  carried  from  the  ruins  to  die 
in  Union. 

*  Larpenteur,  who  was  there,  has  given  even  a  more  circum- 
stantial account  of  this  terrible  tragedy. 


48  THE  STOEY  OF  THE  TEAPPER 

This  dark  act  marked  the  last  important  episode 
in  the  long  conflict  among  traders.  A  decline  of  values 
followed  the  civil  war.  Settlers  were  rushing  overland 
to  Oregon,  and  Fort  Union  went  into  the  control  of  the 
militia.  To-day  St.  Louis  is  still  a  centre  of  trade  in 
manufactured  furs,  and  St.  Paul  yet  receives  raw  pelts 
from  trappers  who  wander  through  the  forests  of  Min- 
nesota and  Idaho  and  the  mountains.  Only  a  year  ago 
the  writer  employed  as  guides  in  the  mountains  three 
trappers  who  have  speat  their  lives  ranging  the  north- 
ern wilds  and  the  Upper  Missouri;  but  outside  the 
mountain  and  forest  wastes,  the  vast  hunting-grounds 
of  the  famous  old  trappers  have  been  chalked  oS  by 
the  fences  of  settlers. 

In  Canada,  too,  bloodshed  marked  the  last  of  the 
conflict — once  in  the  seventies  when  Louis  Kiel,  a  half- 
breed  demagogue,  roused  the  Metis  against  the  survey- 
ors sent  to  prepare  Red  River  for  settlement,  and  again 
in  1885  when  this  unhanged  rascal  incited  the  half- 
breeds  of  the  Saskatchewan  to  rebellion  over  title-deeds 
to  their  lands.  Though  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company 
had  nothing  to  do  with  either  complaint,  the  conflict 
waged  round  their  forts. 

In  the  first  affair  the  ragged  army  of  rebels  took 
possession  of  Fort  Garry,  and  for  no  other  reason  than 
the  love  of  killing  that  riots  in  savage  blood  as  in  a 
wolfs,  shot  down  Scott  outside  the  fort  gates.  In  the 
second  rebellion  Riel's  allies  came  down  on  the  far- 
isolated  Fort  Pitt  three  hundred  strong,  captured  the 
fort,  and  took  the  factor,  Mr.  MacLean,  and  his  family 
to  northern  wastes,  marching  them  through  swamps 
breast-high  with  spring  floods,  where  General  Middle- 
ton's  troops  could  not  follow.  The  children  of  the  fam- 


ASTOR  ENCOUNTERS  NEW  OPPONENTS         49 

ily  had  been  in  the  habit  of  bribing  old  Indian  gossips 
into  telling  stories  by  gifts  of  tobacco;  and  the  friend- 
ship now  stood  the  white  family  in  good  stead.  Day 
and  night  in  all  the  weeks  of  captivity  the  friendly  In- 
dians never  left  the  side  of  the  trader's  family,  slipping 
between  the  hostiles  and  the  young  children,  standing 
guard  at  the  tepee  door,  giving  them  weapons  of  defence 
till  all  were  safely  back  among  the  whites. 

This  time  Kiel  was  hanged,  and  the  Hudson's  Bay 
Company  resumed  its  sway  of  all  that  realm  between 
Labrador  and  the  Pacific  north  of  the  Saskatchewan. 

Traders'  lives  are  like  a  white  paper  with  a  black 
spot.  The  world  looks  only  at  the  black  spot. 

In  spite  of  his  faults  when  in  conflict  with  rivals, 
it  has  been  the  trader  living  alone,  unprotected  and  un- 
fearing,  one  voice  among  a  thousand,  who  has  re- 
strained the  Indian  tribes  from  massacres  that  would 
have  rolled  back  the  progress  of  the  West  a  quarter  of 
a  century. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  FRENCH   TRAPPER 

To  live  hard  and  die  hard,  king  in  the  wilderness 
and  pauper  in  the  town,  lavish  to-day  and  penniless 
to-morrow — such  was  the  life  of  the  most  picturesque 
figure  in  America's  history. 

Take  a  map  of  America.  Put  your  finger  on  any 
point  between  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  and  Hudson  Bay, 
or  the  Great  Lakes  and  the  Rockies.  Ask  who  was  the 
first  man  to  hlaze  a  trail  into  this  wilderness;  and 
wherever  you  may  point,  the  answer  is  the  same — the 
French  trapper. 

Impoverished  English  nohlemen  of  the  seventeenth 
century  took  to  freehooting,  Spanish  dons  to  piracy 
and  search  for  gold;  but  for  the  young  French  noblesse 
the  way  to  fortune  was  by  the  fur  trade.  Freedom  from 
restraint,  quick  wealth,  lavish  spending,  and  adventur- 
ous living  all  appealed  to  a  class  that  hated  the  menial 
and  slow  industry  of  the  farm.  The  only  capital  re- 
quired for  the  fur  trade  was  dauntless  courage.  Mer- 
chants were  keen  to  supply  money  enough  to  stock 
canoes  with  provisions  for  trade  in  the  wilderness. 
What  would  be  equivalent  to  $5,000  of  modern  money 
was  sufficient  to  stock  four  trappers  with  trade  enough 
for  two  years. 

At  the  end  of  that  time  the  sponsors  looked  for  re- 
00 


THE  FRENCH  TRAPPER  51 

turns  in  furs  to  the  value  of  eight  hundred  per  cent  on 
their  capital.  The  original  investment  would  be  de- 
ducted, and  the  enormous  profit  divided  among  the 
trappers  and  their  outfitters.  In  the  heyday  of  the  fur 
trade,  when  twenty  beaver-skins  were  got  for  an  axe,  it 
was  no  unusual  thing  to  see  a  trapper  receive  what 
would  be  equivalent  to  $3,000  of  our  money  as  his 
share  of  two  years'  trapping.  But  in  the  days  when 
the  French  were  only  beginning  to  advance  up  the 
Missouri  from  Louisiana  and  across  from  Michili- 
mackinac  to  the  Mississippi  vastly  larger  fortunes  were 
made. 

Two  partners  *  have  brought  out  as  much  as  $200,- 
000  worth  of  furs  from  the  great  game  preserve  be- 
tween Lake  Superior  and  the  head  waters  of  the  Mis- 
souri after  eighteen  months'  absence  from  St.  Louis 
or  from  Montreal.  The  fur  country  was  to  the  young 
French  nobility  what  a  treasure-ship  was  to  a  pirate. 
In  vain  France  tried  to  keep  her  colonists  on  the  land 
by  forbidding  trade  without  a  license.  Fines,  the  gal- 
leys for  life,  even  death  for  repeated  offence,  were  the 
punishments  held  over  the  head  of  the  illicit  trader. 
The  French  trapper  evaded  all  these  by  staying  in  the 
wilds  till  he  amassed  fortune  enough  to  buy  off  pun- 
ishment, or  till  he  had  lost  taste  for  civilized  life  and 
remained  in  the  wilderness,  coureur  des  ~bois,  voyageur, 
or  leader  of  a  band  of  half-wild  retainers  whom  he 
ruled  like  a  feudal  baron,  becoming  a  curious  connect- 
ing link  between  the  savagery  of  the  New  World  and 
the  noblesse  of  the  Old. 

Duluth,  of  the  Lakes  region;  La  Salle,  of  the  Mis- 

*  Radisson  and  Groseillers,  from  regions  westward  of  Duluth. 


52  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

sissippi ;  Le  Moyne  d'Iberville,  ranging  from  Louisiana 
to  Hudson  Bay ;  La  Mothe  Cadillac  in  Michilimackinac, 
Detroit,  and  Louisiana;  La  Verendrye  exploring  from 
Lake  Superior  to  the  Rockies;  Radisson  on  Hudson 
Bay — all  won  their  fame  as  explorers  and  discoverers 
in  pursuit  of  the  fur  trade.  A  hundred  years  before 
any  English  mind  knew  of  the  Missouri,  French  voy- 
ageurs  had  gone  beyond  the  Yellowstone.  Before  the 
regions  now  called  Minnesota,  Dakota,  and  Wisconsin 
were  known  to  New  Englanders,  the  French  were  trap- 
ping about  the  head  waters  of  the  Mississippi;  and  two 
centuries  ago  a  company  of  daring  French  hunters  went 
to  New  Mexico  to  spy  on  Spanish  trade. 

East  of  the  Mississippi  were  two  neighbours  whom 
the  French  trapper  shunned — the  English  colonists  and 
the  Iroquois.  North  of  the  St.  Lawrence  was  a  power 
that  he  shunned  still  more — the  French  governor,  who 
had  legal  right  to  plunder  the  peltries  of  all  who  traded 
and  trapped  without  license.  But  between  St.  Louis 
and  MacKenzie  River  was  a  great  unclaimed  wilder- 
ness, whence  came  the  best  furs. 

Naturally,  this  became  the  hunting-ground  of  the 
French  trapper. 

There  were  four  ways  by  which  he  entered  his  hunt- 
ing-ground: (1)  Sailing  from  Quebec  to  the  mouth  of 
the  Mississippi,  he  ascended  the  river  in  pirogue  or 
dugout,  but  this  route  was  only  possible  for  a  man  with 
means  to  pay  for  the  ocean  voyage.  (2)  From  Detroit 
overland  to  the  Illinois,  or  Ohio,  which  he  rafted  down 
to  the  Mississippi,  and  then  taking  to  canoe  turned 
north.  .(3)  From  Michilimackinac,  which  was  always 
a  grand  rendezvous  for  the  French  and  Indian  hunters, 
to  Green  Bay  on  Lake  Michigan,  thence  up-stream  to 


THE  FRENCH  TRAPPER  53 

Fox  River,  overland  to  the  Wisconsin,  and  down-stream 
to  the  Mississippi.  (4)  Up  the  Ottawa  through  "  the 
Soo  "  to  Lake  Superior  and  westward  to  the  hunting- 
ground.  Whichever  way  he  went  his  course  was  mainly 
up-stream  and  north:  hence  the  name  Pays  d'en  Haut 
vaguely  designated  the  vast  hunting-ground  that  lay 
between  the  Missouri  and  the  MacKenzie  River. 

The  French  trapper  was  and  is  to-day  as  different 
from  the  English  as  the  gamester  is  from  the  merchant. 
Of  all  the  fortunes  brought  from  the  Missouri  to  St. 
Louis,  or  from  the  Pays  d'en  Haut  to  Montreal,  few 
escaped  the  gaming-table  and  dram-shop.  Where  the 
English  trader  saves  his  returns,  Pierre  lives  high  and 
plays  high,  and  lords  it  about  the  fur  post  till  he  must 
pawn  the  gay  clothing  he  has  bought  for  means  to  ex- 
ist to  the  opening  of  the  next  hunting  season. 

It  is  now  that  he  goes  back  to  some  birch  tree 
marked  by  him  during  the  preceding  winter's  hunt, 
peels  the  bark  off  in  a  great  seamless  rind,  whittles  out 
ribs  for  a  canoe  from  cedar,  ash,  or  pine,  and  shapes 
the  green  bark  to  the  curve  of  a  canoe  by  means  of 
stakes  and  stones  down  each  side.  Lying  on  his  back 
in  the  sun  spinning  yarns  of  the  great  things  he  has 
done  and  will  do,  he  lets  the  birch  harden  and  dry  to 
the  proper  form,  when  he  fits  the  gunwales  to  the  rag- 
ged edge,  lines  the  inside  of  the  keel  with  thin  pine 
boards,  and  tars  the  seams  where  the  bark  has  crinkled 
and  split  at  the  junction  with  the  gunwale. 

It  is  in  the  idle  summer  season  that  he  and  his 
squaw — for  the  Pierre  adapts,  or  rather  adopts,  him- 
self to  the  native  tribes  by  taking  an  Indian  wife — 
design  the  wonderfully  bizarre  costumes  in  which  the 


54:  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

French  trapper  appears:  the  beaded  toque  for  festive 
occasions,  the  gay  moccasins,  the  buckskin  suit  fringed 
with  horse-hair  and  leather  in  lieu  of  the  Indian  scalp- 
locks,  the  white  caribou  capote  with  horned  head-gear 
to  deceive  game  on  the  hunter's  approach,  the  powder- 
case  made  of  a  buffalo-horn,  the  bullet  bag  of  a  young 
otter-skin,  the  musk-rat  or  musquash  cap,  and  great 
gantlets  coming  to  the  elbow. 

None  of  these  things  does  the  English  trader  do. 
If  he  falls  a  victim  to  the  temptations  awaiting  the 
man  from  the  wilderness  in  the  dram-shop  of  the  trad- 
ing-post, he  takes  good  care  not  to  spend  his  all  on 
the  spree.  He  does  not  affect  the  hunter's  decoy  dress, 
for  the  simple  reason  that  he  prefers  to  let  the  Indians 
do  the  hunting  of  the  difficult  game,  while  he  attends 
to  the  trapping  that  is  gain  rather  than  game.  For 
clothes,  he  is  satisfied  with  cheap  material  from  the 
shops.  And  if,  like  Pierre,  the  Englishman  marries 
an  Indian  wife,  he  either  promptly  deserts  her  when  he 
leaves  the  fur  country  for  the  trading-post  or  sends 
her  to  a  convent  to  be  educated  up  to  his  own  level. 
With  Pierre  the  marriage  means  that  he  has  cast  off 
the  last  vestige  of  civilization  and  henceforth  identi- 
fies himself  with  the  life  of  the  savage. 

After  the  British  conquest  of  Canada  and  the  Amer- 
ican Declaration  of  Independence  came  a  change  in  the 
status  of  the  French  trapper.  Before,  he  had  been 
lord  of  the  wilderness  without  a  rival.  Now,  powerful 
English  companies  poured  their  agents  into  his  hunt- 
ing-grounds. Before,  he  had  been  a  partner  in  the 
fur  trade.  Now,  he  must  either  be  pushed  out  or  en- 
list as  servant  to  the  newcomer.  He  who  had  once 
come  to  Montreal  and  St.  Louis  with  a  fortune  of  pel- 


THE  FRENCH  TRAPPER  55 

tries  on  his  rafts  and  canoes,  now  signed  with  the  great 
English  companies  for  a  paltry  one,  two,  and  three 
hundred  dollars  a  year. 

It  was  but  natural  in  the  new  state  of  things  that 
the  French  trapper,  with  all  his  knowledge  of  forest 
and  stream,  should  become  coureur  des  bois  and  voy- 
ageur,  while  the  Englishman  remained  the  barterer. 
In  the  Mississippi  basin  the  French  trappers  mainly 
enlisted  with  four  companies :  the  Mackinaw  Company, 
radiating  from  Michilimackinac  to  the  Mississippi ;  the 
American  Company,  up  the  Missouri;  the  Missouri 
Company,  officered  by  St.  Louis  merchants,  westward 
to  the  Rockies;  and  the  South- West  Company,  which 
was  John  Jacob  Astor's  amalgamation  of  the  American 
and  Mackinaw.  In  Canada  the  French  sided  with  the 
Nor'  Westers  and  X.  Y.'s,  who  had  sprung  tip  in  oppo- 
sition to  the  great  English  Hudson's  Bay  Company. 

Though  he  had  become  a  burden-carrier  for  his 
quondam  enemies,  the  French  trapper  still  saw  life 
through  the  glamour  of  la  gloire  and  noblesse,  still 
lived  hard  and  died  game,  still  feasted  to-day  and 
starved  to-morrow,  gambled  the  clothes  off  his  back 
and  laughed  at  hardship;  courted  danger  and  trolled 
off  one  of  his  chansons  brought  over  to  America  by 
ancestors  of  Normandy,  uttered  an  oath  in  one  breath 
at  the  whirlpool  ahead  and  in  the  next  crossed  himself 
reverently  with  a  prayer  to  Sainte  Anne,  the  voyageurs' 
saint,  just  before  his  canoe  took  the  plunge. 

Your  Spanish  grandee  of  the  Missouri  Company, 
like  Manuel  Lisa  of  St.  Louis,  might  sit  in  a  counting- 
house  or  fur  post  adding  up  rows  of  figures,  and  your 
Scotch  merchant  chaffer  with  Indians  over  the  value 


56  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

of  a  beaver-skin.  As  for  Pierre,  give  him  a  canoe 
sliding  past  wooded  banks  with  a  throb  of  the  keel  to 
the  current  and  the  whistle  of  wild-fowl  overhead; 
clear  sky  above  with  a  feathering  of  wind  clouds,  clear 
sky  below  with  a  feathering  of  wind  clouds,  and  the 
canoe  between  like  a  bird  at  poise.  Sometimes  a  fair 
wind  livens  the  pace ;  for  the  voyageurs  hoist  a  blanket 
sail,  and  the  canoe  skims  before  the  breeze  like  a  sea- 
gull. 

Where  the  stream  gathers  force  and  whirls  for- 
ward in  sharp  eddies  and  racing  leaps  each  voyageur 
knows  what  to  expect.  No  man  asks  questions.  The 
bowman  stands  up  with  his  eyes  to  the  fore  and  steel- 
shod  pole  ready.  Every  eye  is  on  that  pole.  Presently 
comes  a  roar,  and  the  green  banks  begin  to  race.  The 
canoe  no  longer  glides.  It  vaults — springs — bounds, 
with  a  shiver  of  live  waters  under  the  keel  and  a  buoy- 
ant rise  to  her  prow  that  mounts  the  crest  of  each 
wave  fast  as  wave  pursues  wave.  A  fanged  rock  thrusts 
up  in  mid-stream.  One  deft  push  of  the  pole.  Each 
paddler  takes  the  cue;  and  the  canoe  shoots  past  the 
danger  straight  as  an  arrow,  righting  herself  to  a  new 
course  by  another  lightning  sweep  of  the  pole  and 
paddles. 

But  the  waters  gather  as  if  to  throw  themselves  for- 
ward. The  roar  becomes  a  crash.  As  if  moved  by  one 
mind  the  paddlers  brace  back.  The  lightened  bow  lifts. 
A  white  dash  of  spray.  She  mounts  as  she  plunges; 
and  the  voyageurs  are  whirling  down-stream  below  a 
small  waterfall.  Not  a  word  is  spoken  to  indicate  that 
it  is  anything  unusual  to  sauter  les  rapides,  as  the  voy- 
ageurs say.  The  men  are  soaked.  Now,  perhaps,  some 
one  laughs ;  for  Jean,  or  Ba'tiste,  or  the  dandy  of  the 


THE  FRENCH  TRAPPER  57 

crew,  got  his  moccasins  wet  when  the  canoe  took  water. 
They  all  settle  forward.  One  paddler  pauses  to  bail 
out  water  with  his  hat. 

Thus  the  lowest  waterfalls  are  run  without  a  port- 
age. Coming  back  this  way  with  canoes  loaded  to  the 
water-line,  there  must  be  a  disembarking.  If  the  rapids 
be  short,  with  water  enough  to  carry  the  loaded 
canoe  high  above  rocks  that  might  graze  the  bark,  all 
hands  spring  out  in  the  water,  but  one  man  who  re- 
mains to  steady  the  craft ;  and  the  canoe  is  "  tracked  " 
up-stream,  hauled  along  by  ropes.  If  the  rapids  be  at 
all  dangerous,  each  voyageur  lands,  with  pack  on  his 
back  and  pack-straps  across  his  forehead,  and  runs 
along  the  shore.  A  long  portage  is  measured  by  the 
number  of  pipes  the  voyageur  smokes,  each  lighting 
up  meaning  a  brief  rest;  and  a  portage  of  many 
"  pipes  "  will  be  taken  at  a  running  gait  on  the  hottest 
days  without  one  word  of  complaint.  Nine  miles  is 
the  length  of  one  famous  portage  opposite  the  Chau- 
diere  Falls  on  the  Ottawa. 

In  winter  the  voyageur  becomes  coureur  des  bois 
to  his  new  masters.  Then  for  six  months  endless  reach- 
es, white,  snow-padded,  silent;  forests  wreathed  and 
bossed  with  snow;  nights  in  camp  on  a  couch  of  pines 
or  rolled  in  robes  with  a  roaring  fire  to  keep  the  wolves 
off,  melting  snow  steaming  to  the  heat,  meat  sputter- 
ing at  the  end  of  a  skewered  stick;  sometimes  to  the 
marche  done!  marche  done!  of  the  driver,  with  crisp 
tinkling  of  dog-bells  in  frosty  air,  a  long  journey  over- 
land by  dog-sled  to  the  trading-post;  sometimes  that 
blinding  fury  which  sweeps  over  the  northland,  turn- 
ing earth  and  air  to  a  white  darkness;  sometimes  a 
belated  traveller  cowering  under  a  snow-drift  for 


58  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

warmth  and  wrapping  his  blanket  about  him  to  cross 
life's  Last  Divide. 

These  things  were  the  every-day  life  of  the  French 
trapper. 

At  present  there  is  only  one  of  the  great  fur  com- 
panies remaining — the  Hudson's  Bay  of  Canada.  In 
the  United  States  there  are  only  two  important  centres 
of  trade  in  furs  which  are  not  imported — St.  Paul  and 
St.  Louis.  For  both  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  and 
the  fur  traders  of  the  Upper  Missouri  the  French  trap- 
per still  works  as  his  ancestors  did  for  the  great  com- 
panies a  hundred  years  ago. 

The  roadside  tramp  of  to-day  is  a  poor  representa- 
tive of  Robin  Hoods  and  Rob  Roys;  and  the  French 
trapper  of  shambling  gait  and  baggy  clothes  seen  at 
the  fur  posts  of  the  north  to-day  is  a  poor  type  of  the 
class  who  used  to  stalk  through  the  baronial  halls  *  of 
Montreal's  governor  like  a  lord  and  set  the  rafters  of 
Fort  William's  council  chamber  ringing,  and  make  the 
wine  and  the  money  and  the  brawls  of  St.  Louis  a 
by-word. 

And  yet,  with  all  his  degeneracy,  the  French  trap- 
per retains  a  something  of  his  old  traditions.  A  few 
years  ago  I  was  on  a  northern  river  steamer  going 
to  one  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  trading-posts.  A  brawl 
seemed  to  sound  from  the  steerage  passengers.  What 
was  the  matter  ?  "  Oh,"  said  the  captain,  "  the  French 
trappers  going  out  north  for  the  winter,  drunk  as 
usual!" 

*  Especially  the  Ch&teau  de  Ramezay,  where  great  under- 
ground vaults  were  built  for  the  storing  of  pelts  in  case  of  attack 
from  New  Englander  and  Iroquois.  These  vaults  may  still  be 
seen  under  Chateau  de  Ramezay. 


THE  FRENCH  TRAPPER  59 

As  he  spoke,  a  voice  struck  tip  one  of  those  chansons 
populaires,  which  have  been  sung  by  every  generation 
of  voyageurs  since  Frenchmen  came  to  America,  A  La 
Claire  Fontaine,  a  song  which  the  French  trappers' 
ancestors  brought  from  Normandy  hundreds  of  years 
ago,  about  the  fickle  lady  and  the  faded  roses  and  the 
vain  regrets.  Then — was  it  possible? — these  grizzled 
fellows,  dressed  in  tinkers'  tatters,  were  singing — 
what?  A  song  of  the  Grand  Monarque  which  has  led 
armies  to  battle,  but  not  a  song  which  one  would  ex- 
pect to  hear  in  northern  wilds — 

"Malbrouck  s'on  va-t-en  guerre 
Mais  quand  reviendra  a-t-il  ? " 

Three  foes  assailed  the  trapper  alone  in  the  wilds. 
The  first  danger  was  from  the  wolf-pack.  The  sec- 
ond was  the  Indian  hostile  egged  on  by  rival  traders. 
This  danger  the  French  trapper  minimized  by  identi- 
fying himself  more  completely  with  the  savage  than 
any  other  fur  trader  succeeded  in  doing.  The  third 
foe  was  the  most  perverse  and  persevering  thief  known 
outside  the  range  of  human  criminals. 

Perhaps  the  day  after  the  trapper  had  shot  his 
first  deer  he  discovered  fine  footprints  like  a  child's 
hand  on  the  snow  around  the  carcass.  He  recognises 
the  trail  of  otter  or  pekan  or  mink.  It  would  be 
useless  to  bait  a  deadfall  with  meat  when  an  unpolluted 
feast  lies  on  the  snow.  The  man  takes  one  of  his  small 
traps  and  places  it  across  the  line  of  approach.  This 
trap  is  buried  beneath  snow  or  brush.  Every  trace  of 
man-smell  is  obliterated.  The  fresh  hide  of  a  deer 
may  be  dragged  across  the  snow.  Pomatum  or  casto- 
reum  may  be  daubed  on  everything  touched.  He  may 


60  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

even  handle  the  trap  with  deer-hide.  Pekan  travel  in 
pairs.  Besides,  the  dead  deer  will  be  likely  to  attract 
more  than  one  forager;  so  the  man  sets  a  circle  of 
traps  round  the  carcass. 

The  next  morning  he  comes  back  with  high  hope. 
Very  little  of  the  deer  remains.  All  the  flesh-eaters 
of  the  forest,  big  and  little,  have  been  there.  Why, 
then,  is  there  no  capture?  One  trap  has  been  pulled 
up,  sprung,  and  partly  broken.  Another  carried  a  little 
distance  off  and  dumped  into  a  hollow.  A  third  had 
caught  a  pekan ;  but  the  prisoner  had  been  worried  and 
torn  to  atoms.  Another  was  tampered  with  from  be- 
hind and  exposed  for  very  deviltry.  Some  have  dis- 
appeared altogether. 

Among  forest  creatures  few  are  mean  enough  to 
kill  when  they  have  full  stomachs,  or  to  eat  a  trapped 
brother  with  untrapped  meat  a  nose-length  away. 

The  French  trapper  rumbles  out  some  maledictions 
on  U  sacre  carcajou.  Taking  a  piece  of  steel  like  a 
cheese-tester's  instrument,  he  pokes  grains  of  strych- 
nine into  the  remaining  meat.  He  might  have  saved 
himself  the  trouble.  The  next  day  he  finds  the  poi- 
soned meat  mauled  and  spoiled  so  that  no  animal  will 
touch  it.  There  is  nothing  of  the  deer  but  picked  bones. 
So  the  trapper  tries  a  deadfall  for  the  thief.  Again  he 
might  have  spared  himself  the  trouble.  His  next  visit 
shows  the  deadfall  torn  from  behind  and  robbed  with- 
out danger  to  the  thief. 

Several  signs  tell  the  trapper  that  the  marauder  is 
the  carcajou  or  wolverine.  All  the  stealing  was  done 
at  night ;  and  the  wolverine  is  nocturnal.  All  the  traps 
had  been  approached  from  behind.  The  wolverine  will 
not  cross  man's  track.  The  poison  in  the  meat  had 


THE  FRENCH  TRAPPER  61 

been  scented.  Whether  the  wolverine  knows  poison, 
he  is  too  wary  to  experiment  on  doubtful  diet.  The 
exposing  of  the  traps  tells  of  the  curiosity  which  char- 
acterizes the  wolverine.  Other  creatures  would  have 
had  too  much  fear.  The  tracks  run  back  to  cover,  and 
not  across  country  like  the  badger's  or  the  fox's. 

Fearless,  curious,  gluttonous,  wary,  and  suspicious, 
the  mischief-maker  and  the  freebooter  and  the  criminal 
of  the  animal  world,  a  scavenger  to  save  the  northland 
from  pollution  of  carrion,  and  a  scourge  to  destroy 
wounded,  weaklings,  and  laggards — the  wolverine  has 
the  nose  of  a  fox,  with  long,  uneven,  tusk-like  teeth 
that  seem  to  be  expressly  made  for  tearing.  The  eyes 
are  well  set  back,  greenish,  alert  with  almost  human 
intelligence  of  the  type  that  preys.  Out  of  the  fulness 
of  his  wrath  one  trapper  gave  a  perfect  description  of 
the  wolverine.  He  didn't  object,  he  said,  to  being  out- 
run by  a  wolf,  or  beaten  by  a  respectable  Indian,  but  to 
be  outwitted  by  a  little  beast  the  size  of  a  pig  with  the 
snout  of  a  fox,  the  claws  of  a  bear,  and  the  fur  of  a 
porcupine's  quills,  was  more  than  he  could  stand. 

In  the  economy  of  nature  the  wolverine  seems  to 
have  but  one  design — destruction.  Beaver-dams  two 
feet  thick  and  frozen  like  rock  yield  to  the  ripping  on- 
slaught of  its  claws.  He  robs  everything:  the  musk- 
rats'  haycock  houses;  the  gopher  burrows;  the  cached 
elk  and  buffalo  calves  under  hiding  of  some  shrub 
while  the  mothers  go  off  to  the  watering-place;  the 
traps  of  his  greatest  foe,  man ;  the  cached  provisions  of 
the  forest  ranger;  the  graves  of  the  dead;  the  very 
tepees  and  lodges  and  houses  of  Indian,  half-breed,  and 
white  man.  While  the  wolverine  is  averse  to  crossing 
man's  track,  he  will  follow  it  for  days,  like  a  shark 


62  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

behind  a  ship;  for  he  knows  as  well  as  the  man  knows 
there  will  be  food  in  the  traps  when  the  man  is  in  his 
lodge,  and  food  in  the  lodge  when  the  man  is  at  the 
traps. 

But  the  wolverine  has  two  characteristics  by  which 
he  may  be  snared — gluttony  and  curiosity. 

After  the  deer  has  disappeared  the  trapper  finds 
that  the  wolverine  has  been  making  as  regular  rounds 
of  the  traps  as  he  has  himself.  It  is  then  a  question 
whether  the  man  or  the  wolverine  is  to  hold  the  hunt- 
ing-ground. A  case  is  on  record  at  Moose  Factory,  on 
James  Bay,  of  an  Indian  hunter  and  his  wife  who  were 
literally  brought  to  the  verge  of  starvation  by  a  wolver- 
ine that  nightly  destroyed  their  traps.  The  contest 
ended  by  the  starving  Indians  travelling  a  hundred 
miles  from  the  haunts  of  that  "bad  devil — oh — he — 
bad  devil — carcajou !  "  Remembering  the  curiosity  and 
gluttony  of  his  enemy,  the  man  sets  out  his  strongest 
steel-traps.  He  takes  some  strong-smelling  meat,  bacon 
or  fish,  and  places  it  where  the  wolverine  tracks  run. 
Around  this  he  sets  a  circle  of  his  traps,  tying  them 
securely  to  poles  and  saplings  and  stakes.  In  all  like- 
lihood he  has  waited  his  chance  for  a  snowfall  which 
will  cover  traces  of  the  man-smell. 

Night  passes.  In  the  morning  the  man  comes  to 
his  traps.  The  meat  has  been  taken.  All  else  is  as 
before.  Not  a  track  marks  the  snow ;  but  in  midwinter 
meat  does  not  walk  off  by  itself.  The  man  warily  feels 
for  the  hidden  traps.  Then  he  notices  that  one  of  the 
stakes  has  been  pulled  up  and  carried  off.  That  is  a 
sign.  He  prods  the  ground  expectantly.  It  is  as  he 
thought.  One  trap  is  gone.  It  had  caught  the  wolver- 
ine; but  the  cunning  beast  had  pulled  with  all  his 


THE  FRENCH  TRAPPER  63 

strength,  snapped  the  attached  sapling,  and  escaped. 
A  fox  or  beaver  would  have  gnawed  the  imprisoned 
limb  off.  The  wolverine  picks  the  trap  up  in  his  teeth 
and  hobbles  as  hard  as  three  legs  will  carry  him  to  the 
hiding  of  a  bush,  or  better  still,  to  the  frozen  surface 
of  a  river,  hidden  by  high  banks,  with  glare  ice  which 
will  not  reveal  a  trail.  But  on  the  river  the  man  finds 
only  a  trap  wrenched  out  of  all  semblance  to  its  proper 
shape,  with  the  spring  opened  to  release  the  impris- 
oned leg. 

The  wolverine  had  been  caught,  and  had  gone  to  the 
river  to  study  out  the  problem  of  unclinching  the 
spring. 

One  more  device  remains  to  the  man.  It  is  a  gun 
trick.  The  loaded  weapon  is  hidden  full-cock  under 
leaves  or  brush.  Directly  opposite  the  barrel  is  the 
bait,  attached  by  a  concealed  string  to  the  trigger. 
The  first  pull  will  blow  the  thief's  head  off. 

The  trap  experience  would  have  frightened  any 
other  animals  a  week's  run  from  man's  tracks ;  but  the 
wolverine  grows  bolder,  and  the  trapper  knows  he  will 
find  his  snares  robbed  until  carcajou  has  been  killed. 

Perhaps  he  has  tried  the  gun  trick  before,  to  have 
the  cord  gnawed  through  and  the  bait  stolen.  A 
wolverine  is  not  to  be  easily  tricked;  but  its  gluttony 
and  curiosity  bring  it  within  man's  reach. 

The  man  watches  until  he  knows  the  part  of  the 
'woods  where  the  wolverine  nightly  gallops.  He  then 
procures  a  savoury  piece  of  meat  heavy  enough  to  bal- 
ance a  cocked  trigger,  not  heavy  enough  to  send  it  off. 
The  gun  is  suspended  from  some  dense  evergreen, 
which  will  hide  the  weapon.  The  bait  hangs  from  the 
trigger  above  the  wolverine's  reach. 


64:  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

Then  a  curious  game  begins. 

One  morning  the  trapper  sees  the  wolverine  tracks 
round  and  round  the  tree  as  if  determined  to  ferret 
out  the  mystery  of  the  meat  in  mid-air. 

The  next  morning  the  tracks  have  come  to  a  stand 
below  the  meat.  If  the  wolverine  could  only  get  up  to 
the  bait,  one  whiff  would  tell  him  whether  the  man- 
smell  was  there.  He  sits  studying  the  puzzle  till  his 
mark  is  deep  printed  in  the  snow. 

The  trapper  smiles.    He  has  only  to  wait. 

The  rascal  may  become  so  bold  in  his  predatory 
visits  that  the  man  may  be  tempted  to  chance  a  shot 
without  waiting. 

But  if  the  man  waits  Nemesis  hangs  at  the  end  of 
the  cord.  There  comes  a  night  when  the  wolverine's 
curiosity  is  as  rampant  as  his  gluttony.  A  quick 
clutch  of  the  ripping  claws  and  a  blare  of  fire-smoke 
blows  the  robber's  head  into  space. 

The  trapper  will  hold  those  hunting-grounds. 

He  has  got  rid  of  the  most  unwelcome  visitor  a 
solitary  man  ever  had;  but  for  the  consolation  of  those 
whose  sympathies  are  keener  for  the  animal  than  the 
man,  it  may  be  said  that  in  the  majority  of  such  con- 
tests it  is  the  wolverine  and  not  the  man  that  wins. 


CHAPTER   VII 

THE  BUFFALO-RUNNERS 

IF  the  trapper  had  a  crest  like  the  knights  of  the 
wilderness  who  lived  lives  of  daredoing  in  olden  times, 
it  should  represent  a  canoe,  a  snow-shoe,  a  musket,  a 
heaver,  and  a  buffalo.  While  the  beaver  was  his  quest 
and  the  coin  of  the  fur-trading  realm,  the  buffalo  was 
the  great  staple  on  which  the  very  existence  of  the 
trapper  depended. 

Bed  and  blankets  and  clothing,  shields  for  war- 
time, sinew  for  bows,  bone  for  the  shaping  of  rude 
lance-heads,  kettles  and  bull-boats  and  saddles,  roof 
and  rug  and  curtain  wall  for  the  hunting  lodge,  and, 
most  important  of  all,  food  that  could  be  kept  in  any 
climate  for  any  length  of  time  and  combined  the  lightest 
weight  with  the  greatest  nourishment — all  these  were 
supplied  by  the  buffalo. 

From  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  to  the  Saskatchewan  and 
from  the  Alleghanies  to  the  Rockies  the  buffalo  was  to 
the  hunter  what  wheat  is  to  the  farmer.  Moose  and 
antelope  and  deer  were  plentiful  in  the  limited  area  of 
a  favoured  habitat.  Provided  with  water  and  grass 
the  buffalo  could  thrive  in  any  latitude  south  of  the 
sixties,  with  a  preference  for  the  open  ground  of  the 
great  central  plains  except  when  storms  and  heat  drove 
the  herds  to  the  shelter  of  woods  and  valleys. 
6  65 


66  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

Besides,  in  that  keen  struggle  for  existence  which 
goes  on  in  the  animal  world,  the  buffalo  had  strength 
to  defy  all  enemies.  Of  all  the  creatures  that  prey, 
only  the  full-grown  grisly  was  a  match  against  the 
buffalo ;  and  according  to  old  hunting  legends,  even  the 
grisly  held  back  from  attacking  a  beast  in  the  prime 
of  its  power  and  sneaked  in  the  wake  of  the  roving 
herds,  like  the  coyotes  and  timber-wolves,  for  the  chance 
of  hamstringing  a  calf,  or  breaking  a  young  cow's  neck, 
or  tackling  some  poor  old  king  worsted  in  battle  and 
deposed  from  the  leadership  of  the  herd,  or  snapping 
up  some  lost  buffalo  staggering  blind  on  the  trail  of 
a  prairie  fire.  The  buffalo,  like  the  range  cattle,  had  a 
quality  that  made  for  the  persistence  of  the  species. 
When  attacked  by  a  beast  of  prey,  they  would  line  up 
for  defence,  charge  upon  the  assailant,  and  trample 
life  out.  Adaptability  to  environment,  strength  excel- 
ling all  foes,  wonderful  sagacity  against  attack — these 
were  factors  that  partly  explained  the  vastness  of  the 
buffalo  herds  once  roaming  this  continent. 

Proofs  enough  remain  to  show  that  the  size  of  the 
herds  simply  could  not  be  exaggerated.  In  two  great 
areas  their  multitude  exceeded  anything  in  the  known 
world.  These  were :  ( 1 )  between  the  Arkansas  and  the 
Missouri,  fenced  in,  as  it  were,  by  the  Mississippi  and 
the  Eockies ;  (2)  between  the  Missouri  and  the  Saskatch- 
ewan, bounded  by  the  Rockies  on  the  west  and  on  the 
east,  that  depression  where  lie  Lakes  Winnipeg,  Mani- 
toba, and  Winnipegoosis.  In  both  regions  the  prairie 
is  scarred  by  trails  where  the  buffalo  have  marched  sin- 
gle file  to  their  watering-places — trails  trampled  by 
such  a  multitude  of  hoofs  that  the  groove  sinks  to  the 
depth  of  a  rider's  stirrup  or  the  hub  of  a  wagon-wheel. 


THE  BUFFALO-RUNNERS  67 

At  fording-places  on  the  Qu'Appelle  and  Saskatchewan 
in  Canada,  and  on  the  Upper  Missouri,  Yellowstone, 
and  Arkansas  in  the  Western  States,  carcasses  of  buf- 
falo have  been  found  where  the  stampeding  herd 
trampled  the  weak  under  foot,  virtually  building  a 
bridge  of  the  dead  over  which  the  vast  host  rushed. 

Then  there  were  "the  fairy  rings/'  ruts  like  the 
water  trail,  only  running  in  a  perfect  circle,  with  the 
hoofprints  of  countless  multitudes  in  and  outside  the 
ring.  Two  explanations  were  given  of  these.  When 
the  calves  were  yet  little,  and  the  wild  animals  raven- 
ous with  spring  hunger,  the  bucks  and  old  leaders 
formed  a  cordon  round  the  mothers  and  their  young. 
The  late  Colonel  Bedson  of  Stony  Mountain,  Manitoba, 
who  had  the  finest  private  collection  of  buffalo  in 
America  until  his  death  ten  years  ago,  when  the  herd 
was  shipped  to  Texas,  observed  another  occasion  when 
the  buffalo  formed  a  circle.  Of  an  ordinary  winter 
storm  the  herd  took  small  notice  except  to  turn  backs 
to  the  wind;  but  if  to  a  howling  blizzard  were  added 
a  biting  north  wind,  with  the  thermometer  forty  de- 
grees below  zero,  the  buffalo  lay  down  in  a  crescent  as 
a  wind-break  to  the  young.  Besides  the  "  fairy  rings  " 
and  the  fording-places,  evidences  of  the  buffaloes'  num- 
bers are  found  at  the  salt-licks,  alkali  depressions  on 
the  prairie,  soggy  as  paste  in  spring,  dried  hard  as 
rock  in  midsummer  and  retaining  footprints  like  a 
plaster  cast;  while  at  the  wallows,  where  the  buffalo 
have  been  taking  mud-baths  as  a  refuge  from  vermin 
and  summer  heat,  the  ground  is  scarred  and  ploughed 
as  if  for  ramparts. 

The  comparison  of  the  buffalo  herds  to  the  north- 
land  caribou  has  become  almost  commonplace;  but  it 


68  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

is  the  sheerest  nonsense.  From  Hearne,  two  hundred 
years  ago,  to  Mr.  Tyrrel  or  Mr.  Whitney  in  the  Barren 
Lands  in  1894-'96,  no  mention  is  ever  made  of  a  cari- 
bou herd  exceeding  ten  thousand.  Few  herds  of  one 
thousand  have  ever  been  seen. 

What  are  the  facts  regarding  the  buffalo? 

In  the  thirties,  when  the  American  Fur  Company 
was  in  the  heyday  of  its  power,  there  were  sent  from  St. 
Louis  alone  in  a  single  year  one  hundred  thousand 
robes.  The  company  bought  only  the  perfect  robes. 
The  hunter  usually  kept  an  ample  supply  for  his  own 
needs;  so  that  for  every  robe  bought  by  the  company, 
three  times  as  many  were  taken  from  the  plains.  St. 
Louis  was  only  one  port  of  shipment.  Equal  quanti- 
ties of  robes  were  being  sent  from  Mackinaw,  Detroit, 
Montreal,  and  Hudson  Bay.  A  million  would  not  cover 
the  number  of  robes  sent  east  each  year  in  the  thirties 
and  forties.  In  1868  Inman,  Sheridan,  and  Ouster 
rode  continuously  for  three  days  through  one  herd  in 
the  Arkansas  region.  In  1869  trains  on  the  Kansas 
Pacific  were  held  from  nine  in  the  morning  till  six  at 
night  to  permit  the  passage  of  one  herd  across  the 
tracks.  Army  officers  related  that  in  1862  a  herd  moved 
north  from  the  Arkansas  to  the  Yellowstone  that  cov- 
ered an  area  of  seventy  by  thirty  miles.  Catlin  and 
Inman  and  army  men  and  employees  of  the  fur  compa- 
nies considered  a  drove  of  one  hundred  thousand  buffalo 
a  common  sight  along  the  line  of  the  Santa  Fe  trail. 
Inman  computes  that  from  St.  Louis  alone  the  bones 
of  thirty-one  million  buffalo  were  shipped  between 
1868  and  1881.  Northward  the  testimony  is  the  same. 
John  MacDonell,  a  partner  of  the  North-West  Com- 
pany, tells  how  at  the  beginning  of  the  last  century  a 


THE  BUFFALO-RUNNERS  69 

herd  stampeded  across  the  ice  of  the  Qu'Appelle  val- 
ley. In  some  places  the  ice  broke.  When  the  thaw 
came,  a  continuous  line  of  drowned  buffalo  drifted 
past  the  fur  post  for  three  days.  Mr.  MacDonell 
counted  up  to  seven  thousand  three  hundred  and 
sixty:  there  his  patience  gave  out.  And  the  number 
of  the  drowned  was  only  a  fringe  of  the  travelling 
herd. 

To-day  where  are  the  buffalo  ?  A  few  in  the  public 
parks  of  the  United  States  and  Canada.  A  few  of 
Colonel  Bedson's  old  herd  on  Lord  Strathcona's  farm 
in  Manitoba  and  the  rest  on  a  ranch  in  Texas.  The 
railway  more  than  the  pot-hunter  was  the  power  that 
exterminated  the  buffalo.  The  railway  brought  the 
settlers;  and  the  settlers  fenced  in  the  great  ranges 
where  the  buffalo  could  have  galloped  away  from  all  the 
pot-hunters  of  earth  combined.  Without  the  railway 
the  buffalo  could  have  resisted  the  hunter  as  they  re- 
sisted Indian  hunters  from  time  immemorial ;  but  when 
the  iron  line  cut  athwart  the  continent  the  herds  only 
stampeded  from  one  quarter  to  rush  into  the  fresh 
dangers  of  another. 

Much  has  been  said  about  man's  part  in  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  buffalo;  and  too  much  could  not  be  said 
against  those  monomaniacs  of  slaughter  who  went  into 
the  buffalo-hunt  from  sheer  love  of  killing,  hiring  the 
Indians  to  drive  a  herd  over  an  embankment  or  into 
soft  snow,  while  the  valiant  hunters  sat  in  some  shel- 
tered spot,  picking  off  the  helpless  quarry.  This  was 
not  hunting.  It  was  butchery,  which  none  but  hungry 
savages  and  white  barbarians  practised.  The  plains- 
man— who  is  the  true  type  of  the  buffalo-runner — en- 
tered the  lists  on  a  fair  field  with  the  odds  a  hundred 


70  THE  STOEY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

to  one  against  himself,  and  the  only  advantages  over 
brute  strength  the  dexterity  of  his  own  aim. 

Man  was  the  least  cruel  of  the  buffalo's  foes.  Far 
crueler  havoc  was  worked  by  the  prairie  fire  and  the 
fights  for  supremacy  in  the  leadership  of  the  herd  and 
the  sleuths  of  the  trail  and  the  wild  stampedes  often 
started  by  nothing  more  than  the  shadow  of  a  cloud  on 
the  prairie.  Natural  history  tells  of  nothing  sadder 
than  a  buffalo  herd  overtaken  by  a  prairie  fire.  Flee 
as  they  might,  the  fiery  hurricane  was  fleeter ;  and  when 
the  flame  swept  past,  the  buffalo  were  left  staggering 
over  blackened  wastes,  blind  from  the  fire,  singed  of 
fur  to  the  raw,  and  mad  with  a  thirst  they  were  help- 
less to  quench. 

In  the  fights  for  leadership  of  the  herd  old  age 
went  down  before  youth.  Colonel  Bedson's  daughter 
has  often  told  the  writer  of  her  sheer  terror  as  a  child 
when  these  battles  took  place  among  the  buffalo.  The 
first  intimation  of  trouble  was  usually  a  boldness 
among  the  young  fellows  of  maturing  strength.  On 
the  rove  for  the  first  year  or  two  of  their  existence 
these  youngsters  were  hooked  and  butted  back  into  place 
as  a  rear-guard;  and  woe  to  the  fellow  whose  vanity 
tempted  him  within  range  of  the  leader's  sharp,  prun- 
ing-hook  horns !  Just  as  the  wolf  aimed  for  the 
throat  or  leg  sinews  of  a  victim,  so  the  irate  buffalo 
struck  at  the  point  most  vulnerable  to  his  sharp,  curved 
horn — the  soft  flank  where  a  quick  rip  meant  torture 
and  death. 

Comes  a  day  when  the  young  fellows  refuse  to  be 
hooked  and  hectored  to  the  rear !  Then  one  of  the  bold- 
est braces  himself,  circling  and  guarding  and  wheeling 
and  keeping  his  lowered  horns  in  line  with  the  head 


THE  BUFFALO-RUNNERS  71 

of  the  older  rival.  That  is  the  buffalo  challenge !  And 
there  presently  follows  a  bellowing  like  the  rumbling 
of  distant  thunder,  each  keeping  his  eye  on  the  other, 
circling  and  guarding  and  countering  each  other's 
moves,  like  fencers  with  foils.  When  one  charges,  the 
other  wheels  to  meet  the  charge  straight  in  front; 
and  with  a  crash  the  horns  are  locked.  It  is  then  a 
contest  of  strength  against  strength,  dexterity  against 
dexterity.  Not  unusually  the  older  brute  goes  into  a 
fury  from  sheer  amazement  at  the  younger's  presump- 
tion. His  guarded  charges  become  blind  rushes,  and 
he  soon  finds  himself  on  the  end  of  a  pair  of 
piercing  horns.  As  soon  as  the  rumbling  and  paw- 
ing began,  Colonel  Bedson  used  to  send  his  herders  out 
on  the  fleetest  buffalo  ponies  to  part  the  contestants; 
for,  like  the  king  of  beasts  that  he  is,  the  buffalo  does 
not  know  how  to  surrender.  He  fights  till  he  can  fight 
no  more;  and  if  he  is  not  killed,  is  likely  to  be  man- 
gled, a  deposed  king,  whipped  and  broken-spirited  and 
relegated  to  the  fag-end  of  the  trail,  where  he  drags 
lamely  after  the  subjects  he  once  ruled. 

Some  day  the  barking  of  a  prairie-dog,  the  rustle 
of  a  leaf,  the  shadow  of  a  cloud,  startles  a  giddy  young 
cow.  She  throws  up  her  head  and  is  off.  There  is  a 
stampede — myriad  forms  lumbering  over  the  earth 
till  the  ground  rocks  and  nothing  remains  of  the  buffalo 
herd  but  the  smoking  dust  of  the  far  horizon — nothing 
but  the  poor,  old,  deposed  king,  too  weak  to  keep  up 
the  pace,  feeble  with  fear,  trembling  at  his  own  shadow, 
leaping  in  terror  at  a  leaf  blown  by  the  wind. 

After  that  the  end  is  near,  and  the  old  buffalo  must 
realize  that  fact  as  plainly  as  a  human  being  would. 
Has  he  roamed  the  plains  and  guarded  the  calves  from 


72  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

sleuths  of  the  trail  and  seen  the  devourers  leap  on  a 
fallen  comrade  before  death  has  come,  and  yet  does 
not  know  what  those  vague,  gray  forms  are,  always 
hovering  behind  him,  always  sneaking  to  the  crest  of  a 
hill  when  he  hides  in  the  valley,  always  skulking 
through  the  prairie  grass  when  he  goes  to  a  lookout 
on  the  crest  of  the  hill,  always  stopping  when  he  stops, 
creeping  closer  when  he  lies  down,  scuttling  when  he 
wheels,  snapping  at  his  heels  when  he  stoops  for  a  drink  ? 
If  the  buffalo  did  not  know  what  these  creatures  meant, 
he  would  not  have  spent  his  entire  life  from  calfhood 
guarding  against  them.  But  he  does  know ;  and  there- 
in lies  the  tragedy  of  the  old  king's  end.  He  invaria- 
bly seeks  out  some  steep  background  where  he  can 
take  his  last  stand  against  the  wolves  with  a  face  to 
the  foe. 

But  the  end  is  inevitable. 

While  the  main  pack  baits  him  to  the  fore,  skulkers 
dart  to  the  rear;  and  when,  after  a  struggle  that  lasts 
for  days,  his  hind  legs  sink  powerless  under  him,  ham- 
strung by  the  snap  of  some  vicious  coyote,  he  still  keeps 
his  face  to  the  foe.  But  in  sheer  horror  of  the  tragedy 
the  rest  is  untellable;  for  the  hungry  creatures  that 
prey  do  not  wait  till  death  comes  to  the  victim. 

Poor  old  king !  Is  anything  that  man  has  ever  done 
to  the  buffalo  herd  half  as  tragically  pitiful  as  nature's 
process  of  deposing  a  buffalo  leader? 

Catlin  and  Inman  and  every  traveller  familiar  with 
the  great  plains  region  between  the  Arkansas  and  Sas- 
katchewan testify  that  the  quick  death  of  the  bullet  was, 
indeed,  the  mercy  stroke  compared  to  nature's  end  of 
her  wild  creatures.  In  Colonel  Bedson's  herd  the 
fighters  were  always  parted  before  either  was  disabled; 


THE  BUFFALO-RUNNERS  73 

but  it  was  always  at  the  sacrifice  of  two  or  three  ponies' 
lives. 

In  the  park  specimens  of  buffalo  a  curious  deterio- 
ration is  apparent.  On  Lord  Strathcona's  farm  in 
Manitoba,  where  the  buffalo  still  have  several  hundred 
acres  of  ranging-ground  and  are  nearer  to  their  wild 
state  than  elsewhere,  they  still  retain  their  leonine 
splendour  of  strength  in  shoulders  and  head;  but  at 
Banff  only  the  older  ones  have  this  appearance,  the 
younger  generation,  like  those  of  the  various  city  parks, 
gradually  assuming  more  dwarfed  proportions  about 
the  shoulders,  with  a  suggestion  of  a  big,  round-headed, 
clumsy  sheep. 

Between  the  Arkansas  and  the  Saskatchewan  buf- 
falo were  always  plentiful  enough  for  an  amateur's 
hunt ;  but  the  trapper  of  the  plains,  to  whom  the  hunt 
meant  food  and  clothing  and  a  roof  for  the  coming  year, 
favoured  two  seasons:  (1)  the  end  of  June,  when  he 
had  brought  in  his  packs  to  the  fur  post  and  the  win- 
ter's trapping  was  over  and  the  fort  full  of  idle  hunters 
keen  for  the  excitement  of  the  chase;  (2)  in  midwinter, 
when  that  curious  lull  came  over  animal  life,  before 
the  autumn  stores  had  been  exhausted  and  before  the 
spring  forage  began. 

In  both  seasons  the  buffalo-robes  were  prime :  sleek 
and  glossy  in  June  before  the  shedding  of  the  fleece, 
with  the  fur  at  its  greatest  length ;  fresh  and  clean  and 
thick  in  midwinter.  But  in  midwinter  the  hunters 
were  scattered,  the  herds  broken  in  small  battalions, 
the  climate  perilous  for  a  lonely  man  who  might  be 
tempted  to  track  fleeing  herds  many  miles  from  a 
known  course.  South  of  the  Yellowstone  the  individual 


74:  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

hunter  pursued  the  buffalo  as  he  pursued  deer — by  still- 
hunting;  for  though  the  buffalo  was  keen  of  scent,  he 
was  dull  of  sight,  except  sideways  on  the  level,  and  was 
not  easily  disturbed  by  a  noise  as  long  as  he  did  not  see 
its  cause. 

Behind  the  shelter  of  a  mound  and  to  leeward  of 
the  herd  the  trapper  might  succeed  in  bringing  down 
what  would  be  a  creditable  showing  in  a  moose  or 
deer  hunt ;  but  the  trapper  was  hunting  buffalo  for  their 
robes.  Two  or  three  robes  were  not  enough  from  a 
large  herd;  and  before  he  could  get  more  there  was 
likely  to  be  a  stampede.  Decoy  work  was  too  slow  for 
the  trapper  who  was  buffalo-hunting.  So  was  track- 
ing on  snow-shoes,  the  way  the  Indians  hunted  north 
of  the  Yellowstone.  A  wounded  buffalo  at  close  range 
was  quite  as  vicious  as  a  wounded  grisly;  and  it  did 
not  pay  the  trapper  to  risk  his  life  getting  a  pelt  for 
which  the  trader  would  give  him  only  four  or  five 
dollars'  worth  of  goods. 

The  Indians  hunted  buffalo  by  driving  them  over 
a  precipice  where  hunters  were  stationed  on  each  side 
below,  or  by  luring  the  herd  into  a  pound  or  pit  by 
means  of  an  Indian  decoy  masking  under  a  buffalo-hide. 
But  the  precipice  and  pit  destroyed  too  many  hides ;  and 
if  the  pound  were  a  sort  of  cheval-de-frise  or  corral  con- 
verging at  the  inner  end,  it  required  more  hunters  than 
were  ever  together  except  at  the  incoming  of  the  spring 
brigades. 

When  there  were  many  hunters  and  countless  buf- 
falo, the  white  blood  of  the  plains'  trapper  preferred 
a  fair  fight  in  an  open  field — not  the  indiscriminate 
carnage  of  the  Indian  hunt ;  so  that  the  greatest  buf- 
falo-runs took  place  after  the  opening  of  spring.  The 


THE  BUFFALO-RUNNERS  75 

greatest  of  these  were  on  the  Upper  Missouri.  This 
was  the  Mandan  country,  where  hunters  of  the  Macki- 
naw from  Michilimackinac,  of  the  Missouri  from  St. 
Louis,  of  the  NOT'  Westers  from  Montreal,  of  the  Hud- 
son Bay  from  Fort  Douglas  (Winnipeg),  used  to  con- 
gregate before  the  War  of  1812,  which  barred  out  Cana- 
dian traders. 

At  a  later  date  the  famous,  loud-screeching  Eed 
Eiver  ox-carts  were  used  to  transport  supplies  to  the 
scene  of  the  hunt;  but  at  the  opening  of  the  last  cen- 
tury all  hunters,  whites,  Indians,  and  squaws,  rode  to 
field  on  cayuse  ponies  or  broncos,  with  no  more  sup- 
plies than  could  be  stowed  away  in  a  saddle-pack,  and 
no  other  escort  than  the  old-fashioned  muskets  over 
each  white  man's  shoulder  or  attached  to  his  holster. 

The  Indians  were  armed  with  bow  and  arrow  only. 
The  course  usually  led  north  and  westward,  for  the 
reason  that  at  this  season  the  herds  were  on  their  great 
migrations  north,  and  the  course  of  the  rivers  headed 
them  westward.  From  the  first  day  out  the  hunter 
best  fitted  for  the  captainship  was  recognised  as  leader, 
and  such  discipline  maintained  as  prevented  unruly 
spirits  stampeding  the  buffalo  before  the  cavalcade  had 
closed  near  enough  for  the  wild  rush. 

At  night  the  hunters  slept  under  open  sky  with 
horses  picketed  to  saddles,  saddles  as  pillows,  and  mus- 
ket in  hand.  When  the  course  led  through  the  country 
of  hostiles,  sentinels  kept  guard ;  but  midnight  usually 
saw  all  hunters  in  the  deep  sleep  of  outdoor  life,  bare 
faces  upturned  to  the  stars,  a  little  tenuous  stream  of 
uprising  smoke  where  the  camp-fire  still  glowed  red, 
and  on  the  far,  shadowy  horizon,  with  the  moonlit  sky- 
line meeting  the  billowing  prairie  in  perfect  circle, 


76  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

vague,  whitish  forms — the  coyotes  keeping  watch, 
stealthy  and  shunless  as  death. 

The  northward  movement  of  the  buffalo  began  with 
the  spring.  Odd  scattered  herds  might  have  roamed 
the  valleys  in  the  winter ;  but  as  the  grass  grew  deeper 
and  lush  with  spring  rains,  the  reaches  of  the  prairie 
land  became  literally  covered  with  the  humpback,  furry 
forms  of  the  roving  herds.  Indian  legend  ascribed 
their  coming  directly  to  the  spirits.  The  more  prosaic 
white  man  explained  that  the  buffalo  were  only  emer- 
ging from  winter  shelter,  and  their  migration  was  a 
search  for  fresh  feeding-ground. 

Be  that  as  it  may,  northward  they  came,  in  strag- 
gling herds  that  covered  the  prairie  like  a  flock  of 
locusts;  in  close-formed  battalions,  with  leaders  and 
scouts  and  flank  guards  protecting  the  cows  and  the 
young;  in  long  lines,  single  file,  leaving  the  ground, 
soft  from  spring  rains,  marked  with  a  rut  like  a  ditch ; 
in  a  mad  stampede  at  a  lumbering  gallop  that  roared 
like  an  ocean  tide  up  hills  and  down  steep  ravines, 
sure-footed  as  a  mountain-goat,  thrashing  through  the 
swollen  water-course  of  river  and  slough,  up  embank- 
ments with  long  beards  and  fringed  dewlaps  dripping 
— on  and  on  and  on — till  the  tidal  wave  of  life  had 
hulked  over  the  sky-line  beyond  the  heaving  horizon. 
Here  and  there  in  the  brownish-black  mass  were  white 
and  gray  forms,  light-coloured  buffalo,  freaks  in  the 
animal  world. 

The  age  of  the  calves  in  each  year's  herd  varied. 
The  writer  remembers  a  sturdy  little  buffalo  that  ar- 
rived on  the  scene  of  this  troublous  life  one  freezing 
night  in  January,  with  a  howling  blizzard  and  the  ther- 
mometer at  forty  below — a  combination  that  is  suffi- 


THE  BUFFALO-RUNNERS  77 

cient  to  set  the  teeth  of  the  most  mendacious  northerner 
chattering.  The  young  buffalo  spent  the  first  three 
days  of  his  life  in  this  gale  and  was  none  the  worse, 
which  seems  to  prove  that  climatic  apology,  "  though 
it  is  cold,  you  don't  feel  it."  Another  spindly-legged, 
clumsy  bundle  of  fawn  and  fur  in  the  same  herd  count- 
ed its  natal  day  from  a  sweltering  afternoon  in  August. 

Many  signs  told  the  buffalo-runners  which  way  to 
ride  for  the  herd.  There  was  the  trail  to  the  watering- 
place.  There  were  the  salt-licks  and  the  wallows  and 
the  crushed  grass  where  two  young  fellows  had  been 
smashing  each  other's  horns  in  a  trial  of  strength. 
There  were  the  bones  of  the  poor  old  deposed  king, 
picked  clear  by  the  coyotes,  or,  perhaps,  the  lonely  out- 
cast himself,  standing  at  bay,  feeble  and  frightened, 
a  picture  of  dumb  woe !  To  such  the  hunter's  shot 
was  a  mercy  stroke.  Or,  most  interesting  of  all  signs 
and  surest  proof  that  the  herd  was  near — a  little  bun- 
dle of  fawn-coloured  fur  lying  out  flat  as  a  door-mat 
under  hiding  of  sage-brush,  or  against  a  clay  mound, 
precisely  the  colour  of  its  own  hide. 

Poke  it !  An  ear  blinks,  or  a  big  ox-like  eye  opens ! 
It  is  a  buffalo  calf  left  cached  by  the  mother,  who  has 
gone  to  the  watering-place  or  is  pasturing  with  the 
drove.  Lift  it  up !  It  is  inert  as  a  sack  of  wool.  Let 
it  go!  It  drops  to  earth  flat  and  lifeless  as  a  door- 
mat. The  mother  has  told  it  how  to  escape  the  co- 
yotes and  wolverines ;  and  the  little  rascal  is  "  playing 
dead."  But  if  you  fondle  it  and  warm  it — the  Indians 
say,  breathe  into  its  face — it  forgets  all  about  the 
mother's  warning  and  follows  like  a  pup. 

At  the  first  signs  of  the  herd's  proximity  the  squaws 


78  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

parted  from  the  cavalcade  and  all  impedimenta  re- 
mained behind.  The  best-equipped  man  was  the  man 
with  the  best  horse,  a  horse  that  picked  out  the  largest 
buffalo  from  one  touch  of  the  rider's  hand  or  foot,  that 
galloped  swift  as  wind  in  pursuit,  that  jerked  to  a  stop 
directly  opposite  the  brute's  shoulders  and  leaped  from 
the  sideward  sweep  of  the  charging  horns.  No  sound 
came  from  the  hunters  till  all  were  within  close  range. 
Then  the  captain  gave  the  signal,  dropped  a  flag,  waved 
his  hand,  or  fired  a  shot,  and  the  hunters  charged. 

Arrows  whistled  through  the  air,  shots  clattered 
with  the  fusillade  of  artillery  volleys.  Bullets  fell  to 
earth  with  the  dull  ping  of  an  aim  glanced  aside  by  the 
adamant  head  bones  or  the  heaving  shoulder  fur  of  the 
buffalo.  The  Indians  shouted  their  war-cry  of  "  Ah — 
oh,  ah — oh !  "  Here  and  there  French  voices  screamed 
"  Voila !  Les  boeuf s  !  Les  bceufs !  Sacre !  Tonnerre ! 
Tir — tir — tir — done !  By  Gar !  "  And  Missouri  tra- 
ders called  out  plain  and  less  picturesque  but  more 
forcible  English. 

Sometimes  the  suddenness  of  the  attack  dazed  the 
herd;  but  the  second  volley  with  the  smell  of  powder 
and  smoke  and  men  started  the  stampede.  Then  fol- 
lowed such  a  wild  rush  as  is  unknown  in  the  annals 
of  any  other  kind  of  hunting,  up  hills,  down  embank- 
ments, over  cliffs,  through  sloughs,  across  rivers,  hard 
and  fast  and  far  as  horses  had  strength  to  carry  riders 
in  a  boundless  land ! 

Eiders  were  unseated  and  went  down  in  the  melee; 
horses  caught  on  the  horns  of  charging  bulls  and  ripped 
from  shoulder  to  flank ;  men  thrown  high  in  mid-air  to 
alight  on  the  back  of  a  buffalo ;  Indians  with  dexterous 
aim  bringing  down  the  great  brutes  with  one  arrow;  un- 


,3  a 


THE  BUFFALO-RUNNERS  79 

wary  hunters  trampled  to  death  under  a  multitude  of 
hoofs;  wounded  buffalo  turning  with  fury  on  their 
assailants  till  the  pursuer  became  pursued  and  only  the 
fleetness  of  the  pony  saved  the  hunter's  life. 

A  retired  officer  of  the  North-West  mounted  police, 
who  took  part  in  a  Missouri  buffalo-run  forty  years  ago, 
described  the  impression  at  the  time  as  of  an  earth- 
quake. The  galloping  horses,  the  rocking  mass  of  flee- 
ing buffalo,  the  rumbling  and  quaking  of  the  ground 
under  the  thunderous  pounding,  were  all  like  a  violent 
earthquake.  The  same  gentleman  tells  how  he  once 
saw  a  wounded  buffalo  turn  on  an  Indian  hunter.  The 
man's  horse  took  fright.  Instead  of  darting  sideways 
to  give  him  a  chance  to  send  a  last  finishing  shot  home, 
the  horse  became  wildly  unmanageable  and  fled.  The 
buffalo  pursued.  Off  they  raced,  rider  and  buffalo,  the 
Indian  craning  over  his  horse's  neck,  the  horse  blown 
and  fagged  and  unable  to  gain  one  pace  ahead  of  the 
buffalo,  the  great  beast  covered  with  foam,  his  eyes 
like  fire,  pounding  and  pounding — closer  and  closer  to 
the  horse  till  rider  and  buffalo  disappeared  over  the 
horizon. 

"  To  this  day  I  have  wondered  what  became  of  that 
Indian/'  said  the  officer,  "  for  the  horse  was  losing  and 
the  buffalo  gaining  when  they  went  over  the  bluff." 

The  incident  illustrates  a  trait  seldom  found  in  wild 
animals — a  persistent  vindictiveness. 

In  a  word,  buffalo-hunting  was  not  all  boys'  play. 

After  the  hunt  came  the  gathering  of  skins  and 
meat.  The  tongue  was  first  taken  as  a  delicacy  for  the 
great  feast  that  celebrated  every  buffalo-hunt.  To  this 
was  sometimes  added  the  fleece  fat  or  hump.  White 
hunters  have  been  accused  of  waste,  because  they  used 


80  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

only  the  skin,  tongue,  and  hump  of  the  buffalo.  But 
what  the  white  hunter  left  the  Indian  took,  making 
pemmican  by  pounding  the  meat  with  tallow,  drying 
thinly-shaved  slices  into  "  jerked  "  meat,  getting  thread 
from  the  buffalo  sinews  and  implements  of  the  chase 
from  the  bones. 

The  gathering  of  the  spoils  was  not  the  least  dan- 
gerous part  of  the  buffalo-hunt.  Many  an  apparently 
lifeless  buffalo  has  lunged  up  in  a  death-throe  that  has 
cost  the  hunter  dear.  The  mounted  police  officer  of 
whom  mention  has  been  made  was  once  camping  with 
a  patrol  party  along  the  international  line  between 
Idaho  and  Canada.  Among  the  hunting  stories  told 
over  the  camp-fire  was  that  of  the  Indian  pursued  by 
the  wounded  buffalo.  Scarcely  had  the  colonel  finished 
his  anecdote  when  a  great  hulking  buffalo  rose  to  the 
crest  of  a  hillock  not  a  gunshot  away. 

"  Come  on,  men !  Let  us  all  have  a  shot,"  cried  the 
colonel,  grasping  his  rifle. 

The  buffalo  dropped  at  the  first  rifle-crack,  and  the 
men  scrambled  pell-mell  up  the  hill  to  see  whose  bullet 
had  struck  vital.  Just  as  they  stooped  over  the  fallen 
buffalo  it  lunged  up  with  an  angry  snort. 

The  story  of  the  pursued  Indian  was  still  fresh  in 
all  minds.  The  colonel  is  the  only  man  of  the  party 
honest  enough  to  tell  what  happened  next.  He  de- 
clares if  breath  had  not  given  out  every  man  would  have 
run  till  he  dropped  over  the  horizon,  like  the  Indian  and 
the  buffalo. 

And  when  they  plucked  up  courage  to  go  back,  the 
buffalo  was  dead  as  a  stone. 


CHAPTER   VIII 

THE  MOUNTAINEERS 

IT  was  in  the  Rocky  Mountains  that  American  trap- 
ping attained  its  climax  of  heroism  and  dauntless  dar- 
ing and  knavery  that  out-herods  comparison. 

The  War  of  1812  had  demoralized  the  American  fur 
trade.  Indians  from  both  sides  of  the  international 
boundary  committed  every  depredation,  and  evaded 
punishment  by  scampering  across  the  line  to  the  protec- 
tion of  another  flag.  Alexander  MacKenzie  of  the 
North- West  Company  had  been  the  first  of  the  Canadian 
traders  to  cross  the  Rockies,  reaching  the  Pacific  in 
1793.  The  result  was  that  in  less  than  fifteen  years 
the  fur  posts  of  the  North- West  and  Hudson's  Bay 
Companies  were  dotted  like  beads  on  a  rosary  down 
the  course  of  the  mountain  rivers  to  the  boundary.  Of 
the  American  traders,  the  first  to  follow  up  Lewis  and 
Clark's  lead  from  the  Missouri  to  the  Columbia  were 
Manuel  Lisa  the  Spaniard  and  Major  Andrew  Henry, 
the  two  leading  spirits  of  the  Missouri  Company.  John 
Jacob  Astor  sent  his  Astorians  of  the  Pacific  Company 
across  the  continent  in  1811,  and  a  host  of  St.  Louis 
firms  had  prepared  to  send  free  trappers  to  the  moun- 
tains when  the  war  broke  out.  The  end  of  the  war  saw 
Astoria  captured  by  the  Nor'  Westers,  the  Astorians 
scattered  to  all  parts  of  the  world,  Lisa  driven  down 
7  81 


82  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

the  Missouri  to  Council  Bluffs,  Andrew  Henry  a  fugi- 
tive from  the  Blackfeet  of  the  Yellowstone,  and  all  the 
free  trappers  like  an  idle  army  waiting  for  a  captain. 

Their  captain  came. 

Mr.  Aster's  influence  secured  the  passage  of  a  law 
barring  out  British  fur  traders  from  the  United  States. 
That  threw  all  the  old  Hudson's  Bay  and  North-West 
posts  south  of  the  boundary  into  the  hands  of  Mr. 
Astor's  American  Fur  Company.  He  had  already 
bought  out  the  American  part  of  the  Mackinaw  Com- 
pany's posts,  stretching  west  from  Michilimackinac 
beyond  the  Mississippi  towards  the  head  waters  of  the 
Missouri.  And  now  to  his  force  came  a  tremendous 
accession — all  those  dissatisfied  Nor'  Westers  thrown 
out  of  employment  when  their  company  amalgamated 
with  the  Hudson's  Bay. 

If  Mr.  Astor  alone  had  held  the  American  fur  trade, 
there  would  have  been  none  of  that  rivalry  which  ended 
in  so  much  bloodshed.  But  St.  Louis,  lying  like  a 
gateway  to  the  mountain  trade,  had  always  been  jealous 
of  those  fur  traders  with  headquarters  in  New  York. 
Lisa  had  refused  to  join  Mr.  Astor's  Pacific  Company, 
and  doubtless  the  Spaniard  chuckled  over  his  own  wis- 
dom when  that  venture  failed  with  a  loss  of  nearly  half 
a  million  to  its  founder.  When  Lisa  died  the  St.  Louis 
traders  still  held  back  from  the  American  Fur  Com- 
pany. Henry  and  Ashley  and  the  Sublettes  and  Camp- 
bell and  Fitzpatrick  and  Bridger — subsequently  known 
as  the  Eocky  Mountain  traders — swept  up  the  Mis- 
souri with  brigades  of  one  hundred,  two  hundred,  and 
three  hundred  men,  and  were  overrunning  the  moun- 
tains five  years  before  the  American  Company's  slowly 
extending  line  of  forts  had  reached  as  far  west  as  the 


THE  MOUNTAINEERS  83 

Yellowstone.  A  clash  was  bound  to  ensue  when  these 
two  sets  of  rivals  met  on  a  hunting-field  which  the 
Eocky  Mountain  men  regarded  as  pre-empted  by  them- 
selves. 

The  clash  came  from  the  peculiarities  of  the  hunt- 
ing-ground. 

It  was  two  thousand  miles  by  trappers'  trail  from 
the  reach  of  law.  It  was  too  remote  from  the  fur  posts 
for  trappers  to  go  down  annually  for  supplies.  Sup- 
plies were  sent  up  by  the  fur  companies  to  a  mountain 
rendezvous,  to  Pierre's  Hole  under  the  Tetons,  or  Jack- 
son's Hole  farther  east,  or  Ogden's  Hole  at  Salt  Lake, 
sheltered  valleys  with  plenty  of  water  for  men  and 
horses  when  hunters  and  traders  and  Indians  met  at 
the  annual  camp. 

Elsewhere  the  hunter  had  only  to  follow  the  wind- 
ings of  a  river  to  be  carried  to  his  hunting-ground. 
Here,  streams  were  too  turbulent  for  canoes ;  and  boats 
were  abandoned  for  horses ;  and  mountain  canons  with 
sides  sheer  as  a  wall  drove  the  trapper  back  from  the 
river-bed  to  interminable  forests,  where  windfall  and 
underbrush  and  rockslide  obstructed  every  foot  of  prog- 
ress. The  valley  might  be  shut  in  by  a  blind  wall 
which  cooped  the  hunter  up  where  was  neither  game  nor 
food.  Out  of  this  valley,  then,  he  must  find  a  way  for 
himself  and  his  horses,  noting  every  peak  so  that  he 
might  know  this  region  again,  noting  especially  the 
peaks  with  the  black  rock  walls;  for  where  the  rock 
is  black  snow  has  not  clung,  and  the  mountain  face  will 
not  change;  and  where  snow  cannot  stick,  a  man  can- 
not climb;  and  the  peak  is  a  good  one  for  the  trapper 
to  shun. 

One,  two,  three  seasons  have  often  slipped  away  be- 


84:  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

fore  the  mountaineers  found  good  hunting-ground. 
Ten  years  is  a  short  enough  time  to  learn  the  lie  of  the 
land  in  even  a  small  section  of  mountains.  It  was 
twenty  years  from  the  time  Lewis  and  Clark  first 
crossed  the  mountains  before  the  traders  of  St.  Louis 
could  be  sure  that  the  trappers  sent  into  the  Koekies 
would  find  their  way  out.  Seventy  lives  were  lost  in 
the  first  two  years  of  mountain  trapping,  some  at  the 
hands  of  the  hostile  Blackfeet  guarding  the  entrance 
to  the  mountains  at  the  head  waters  of  the  Missouri, 
some  at  the  hands  of  the  Snakes  on  the  Upper  Columbia, 
others  between  the  Platte  and  Salt  Lake.  Time  and 
money  and  life  it  cost  to  learn  the  hunting-grounds  of 
the  Rockies;  and  the  mountaineers  would  not  see 
knowledge  won  at  such  a  cost  wrested  away  by  a  spy- 
ing rival. 

Then,  too,  the  mountains  had  bred  a  new  type  of 
trapper,  a  new  style  of  trapping. 

Only  the  most  daring  hunters  would  sign  contracts 
for  the  "  Up-Country,"  or  Pays  d'en  Haut  as  the 
French  called  it.  The  French  trappers,  for  the  most 
part,  kept  to  the  river  valleys  and  plains;  and  if  one 
went  to  the  mountains  for  a  term  of  years,  when  he 
came  out  he  was  no  longer  the  smug,  indolent,  laughing, 
chattering  voyageur.  The  great  silences  of  a  life  hard 
as  the  iron  age  had  worked  a  change.  To  begin  with, 
the  man  had  become  a  horseman,  a  climber,  a  scout,  a 
fighter  of  Indians  and  elements,  lank  and  thin  and 
lithe,  silent  and  dogged  and  relentless. 

In  other  regions  hunters  could  go  out  safely  in 
pairs  or  even  alone,  carrying  supplies  enough  for  the 
season  in  a  canoe,  and  drifting  down-stream  with  a 


THE  MOUNTAINEERS  85 

canoe-load  of  pelts  to  the  fur  post.  But  the  mountains 
were  so  distant  and  inaccessible,  great  quantities  of 
supplies  had  to  be  taken.  That  meant  long  cavalcades 
of  pack-horses,  which  Blackfeet  were  ever  on  the  alert 
to  stampede.  Armed  guards  had  to  accompany  the 
pack-train.  Out  of  a  party  of  a  hundred  trappers  sent 
to  the  mountains  by  the  Kock  Mountain  Company, 
thirty  were  always  crack  rifle-shots  for  the  protection 
of  the  company's  property.  One  such  party,  properly 
officered  and  kept  from  crossing  the  animal's  tracks, 
might  not  drive  game  from  a  valley.  Two  such  bands 
of  rival  traders  keen  to  pilfer  each  other's  traps  would 
result  in  ruin  to  both. 

That  is  the  way  the  clash  came  in  the  early  thirties 
of  the  last  century. 

All  winter  bands  of  Rocky  Mountain  trappers  under 
Fitzpatrick  and  Bridger  and  Sublette  had  been  sweep- 
ing, two  hundred  strong,  like  foraging  bandits,  from 
the  head  waters  of  the  Missouri,  where  was  one  moun- 
tain pass  to  the  head  waters  of  the  Platte,  where  was 
a  second  pass  much  used  by  the  mountaineers.  Sum- 
mer came  with  the  heat  that  wakens  all  the  mountain 
silences  to  a  roar  of  rampant  life.  Summer  came  with 
the  fresh-loosened  rocks  clattering  down  the  mountain 
slopes  in  a  landslide,  and  the  avalanches  booming  over 
the  precipices  in  a  Niagara  of  snow,  and  the  swollen 
torrents  shouting  to  each  other  in  a  thousand  voices 
till  the  valleys  vibrated  to  that  grandest  of  all  music 
— the  voice  of  many  waters.  Summer  came  with 
the  heat  that  drives  the  game  up  to  the  cool  heights 
of  the  wind-swept  peaks;  and  the  hunters  of  the 
game  began  retracing  their  way  from  valley  to 


86  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

valley,  gathering  the  furs  cached  during  the  winter 
hunt. 

Then  the  cavalcade  set  out  for  the  rendezvous :  griz- 
zled men  in  tattered  buckskins,  with  long  hair  and  un- 
kempt beards  and  bronzed  skin,  men  who  rode  as  if 
they  were  part  of  the  saddle,  easy  and  careless  but 
always  with  eyes  alert  and  one  hand  near  the  thing  in 
their  holsters;  long  lines  of  pack-horses  laden  with 
furs  climbing  the  mountains  in  a  zigzag  trail  like  a 
spiral  stair,  crawling  along  the  face  of  cliffs  barely  wide 
enough  to  give  a  horse  footing,  skirting  the  sky-line 
between  lofty  peaks  in  order  to  avoid  the  detour  round 
the  broadened  bases,  frequently  swimming  raging  tor- 
rents whose  force  carried  them  half  a  mile  off  their 
trail;  always  following  the  long  slopes,  for  the  long 
slopes  were  most  easily  climbed;  seldom  following  a 
water-course,  for  mountain  torrents  take  short  cuts 
over  precipices ;  packers  scattering  to  right  and  left  at 
the  f ording-places,  to  be  rounded  back  by  the  collie-dog 
and  the  shouting  drivers,  and  the  old  bell-mare  darting 
after  the  bolters  with  her  ears  laid  flat. 

Not  a  sign  by  the  way  escaped  the  mountaineer's 
eye.  Here  the  tumbling  torrent  is  clear  and  sparkling 
and  cold  as  champagne.  He  knows  that  stream  comes 
from  snow.  A  glacial  stream  would  be  milky  blue  or 
milky  green  from  glacial  silts;  and  while  game  seeks 
the  cool  heights  in  summer,  the  animals  prefer  the 
snow-line  and  avoid  the  chill  of  the  iced  masses  in  a 
glacier.  There  will  be  game  coming  down  from  the 
source  of  that  stream  when  he  passes  back  this  way  in 
the  fall.  Ah!  what  is  that  little  indurated  line  run- 
ning up  the  side  of  the  cliff — just  a  displacement  of  the 
rock  chips  here,  a  hardening  of  the  earth  that  winds 


THE  MOUNTAINEERS  87 

in  and  out  among  the  deviPs-club  and  painter's-brush 
and  mountain  laurel  and  rock  crop  and  heather? 

"  Something  has  been  going  up  and  down  here  to 
a  drinking-place,"  says  the  mountaineer. 

Punky  yellow  logs  lie. ripped  open  and  scratched 
where  bruin  has  been  enjoying  a  dainty  morsel  of 
ants'  eggs ;  but  the  bear  did  not  make  that  track.  It  is 
too  dainty,  and  has  been  used  too  regularly.  Neither 
has  the  bighorn  made  it;  for  the  mountain-sheep  sel- 
dom stay  longer  above  tree-line,  resting  in  the  high, 
meadowed  Alpine  valleys  with  the  long  grasses  and 
sunny  reaches  and  larch  shade. 

Presently  the  belled  leader  tinkles  her  way  round 
an  elbow  of  rock  where  a  stream  trickles  down.  This 
is  the  drinking-place.  In  the  soft  mould  is  a  little 
cleft  footprint  like  the  ace  of  hearts,  the  trail  of  the 
mountain-goat  feeding  far  up  at  the  snow-line  where 
the  stream  rises. 

Then  the  little  cleft  mark  unlocks  a  world  of  hunt- 
er's yarns:  how  at  such  a  ledge,  where  the  cataract 
falls  like  wind-blown  mist,  one  trapper  saw  a  mother 
goat  teaching  her  little  kid  to  take  the  leap,  and  how 
when  she  scented  human  presence  she  went  jump — 
jump — jump — up  and  up  and  up  the  rock  wall,  where 
the  man  could  not  follow,  bleating  and  calling  the 
kid;  and  how  the  kid  leaped  and  fell  back  and  leaped, 
and  cried  as  pitifully  as  a  child,  till  the  man,  having 
no  canned  milk  to  bring  it  up,  out  of  very  sympathy 
went  away. 

Then  another  tells  how  he  tried  to  shoot  a  goat 
running  up  a  gulch,  but  as  fast  as  he  sighted  his  rifle 
— "  drew  the  bead  " — the  thing  jumped  from  side  to 
side,  criss-crossing  up  the  gulch  till  she  got  above  dan- 


88  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

ger  and  away.  And  some  taciturn  oracle  comes  out 
with  the  dictum  that  "  men  hadn't  ought  to  try  to  shoot 
goat  except  from  above  or  in  front/' 

Every  pack-horse  of  the  mountains  knows  the  trick 
of  planting  legs  like  stanchions  and  blowing  his  sides 
out  in  a  balloon  when  the  men  are  tightening  cinches. 
No  matter  how  tight  girths  may  be,  before  every  climb 
and  at  the  foot  of  every  slope  there  must  be  re-tighten- 
ing. And  at  every  stop  the  horses  come  shouldering 
up  for  the  packs  to  be  righted,  or  try  to  scrape  the 
things  off  under  some  low-branched  tree. 

Night  falls  swiftly  in  the  mountains,  the  long, 
peaked  shadows  etching  themselves  across  the  valleys. 
Shafts  of  sunlight  slant  through  the  mountain  gaps 
gold  against  the  endless  reaches  of  matted  forest,  red 
as  wine  across  the  snowy  heights.  With  the  purpling 
shadows  comes  a  sudden  chill,  silencing  the  roar  of 
mountain  torrents  to  an  all-pervading  ceaseless  pro- 
longed h — u — s — h — ! 

Mountaineers  take  no  chances  on  the  ledges  after 
dark.  It  is  dangerous  enough  work  to  skirt  narrow 
precipices  in  daylight;  and  sunset  is  often  followed  by 
a  thick  mist  rolling  across  the  heights  in  billows  of  fog. 
These  are  the  clouds  that  one  sees  across  the  peaks  at 
nightfall  like  banners.  How  does  it  feel  benighted 
among  those  clouds  ? 

A  few  years  ago  I  was  saving  a  long  detour  round 
the  base  of  a  mountain  by  riding  along  the  saddle  of 
rock  between  two  peaks.  The  sky-line  rounded  the 
convex  edge  of  a  sheer  precipice  for  three  miles.  Mid- 
way the  inner  wall  rose  straight,  the  outer  edge  above 
blackness — seven  thousand  feet  the  mountaineer  guid- 
ing us  said  it  was,  though  I  think  it  was  nearer 


THE  MOUNTAINEERS  89 

five.  The  guide's  horse  displaced  a  stone  the  size  of 
a  pail  from  the  path.  If  a  man  had  slipped  in  the 
same  way  he  would  have  fallen  to  the  depths;  but 
when  one  foot  slips,  a  horse  has  three  others  to  regain 
himself;  and  with  a  rear-end  flounder  the  horse 
got  his  footing.  But  down — down — down  went  the 
stone,  bouncing  and  knocking  and  echoing  as  it  struck 
against  the  precipice  wall — down — down — down  till  it 
was  no  larger  than  a  spool — then  out  of  sight — and 
silence!  The  mountaineer  looked  back  over  his 
shoulder. 

"Always  throw  both  your  feet  over  the  saddle  to 
the  inner  side  of  the  trail  in  a  place  like  this,"  he  di- 
rected, with  a  curious  meaning  in  his  words. 

"  What  do  you  do  when  the  clouds  catch  you  on  this 
sort  of  a  ledge?" 

"  Get  off — knock  ahead  with  your  rifle  to  feel  where 
the  edge  is — throw  bits  of  rock  through  the  fog  so  you 
can  tell  where  you  are  by  the  sound." 

"  And  when  no  sound  comes  back  ?  " 

"  Sit  still,"  said  he.  Then  to  add  emphasis,  "  You 
bet  you  sit  still!  People  can  say  what  they  like,  but 
when  no  sound  comes  back,  or  when  the  sound's  muf- 
fled as  if  it  came  from  water  below,  you  bet  it  gives 
you  chills ! " 

So  the  mountaineers  take  no  chances  on  the  ledges 
after  dark.  The  moon  riding  among  the  peaks  rises 
over  pack-horses  standing  hobbled  on  the  lee  side  of  a 
roaring  camp-fire  that  will  drive  the  sand-flies  and 
mosquitoes  away,  on  pelts  and  saddle-trees  piled  care- 
fully together,  on  men  sleeping  with  no  pillow  but  a 
pack,  no  covering  but  the  sky. 

If  a  sharp  crash  breaks  the  awful  stillness  of  a 


90  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TEAPPER 

mountain  night,  the  trapper  is  unalarmed.  He  knows 
it  is  only  some  great  rock  loosened  by  the  day's  thaw 
rolling  down  with  a  landslide.  If  a  shrill,  fiendish 
laugh  shrieks  through  the  dark,  he  pays  no  heed.  It 
is  only  the  cougar  prowling  cattishly  through  the  under- 
brush perhaps  still-hunting  the  hunter.  The  lonely  call 
overhead  is  not  the  prairie-hawk,  but  the  eagle  lilting 
and  wheeling  in  a  sort  of  dreary  enjojnnent  of  utter 
loneliness. 

Long  before  the  sunrise  has  drawn  the  tented  shad- 
ows across  the  valley  the  mountaineers  are  astir,  with 
the  pack-horses  snatching  mouthfuls  of  bunch-grass 
as  they  travel  off  in  a  way  that  sets  the  old  leader's  bell 
tinkling. 

The  mountaineers  usually  left  their  hunting- 
grounds  early  in  May.  They  seldom  reached  their 
rendezvous  before  July  or  August.  Three  months 
travelling  a  thousand  miles!  Three  hundred  miles  a 
month !  Ten  miles  a  day !  It  is  not  a  record  that  shows 
well  beside  our  modern  sixty  miles  an  hour — a  thousand 
miles  a  day.  And  yet  it  is  a  better  record;  for  if  our 
latter-day  fliers  had  to  build  the  road  as  they  went 
along,  they  would  make  slower  time  than  the  mountain- 
eers of  a  century  ago. 

Rivers  too  swift  to  swim  were  rafted  on  pine  logs, 
cut  and  braced  together  while  the  cavalcade  waited. 
Muskegs  where  the  industrious  little  beaver  had  flood- 
ed a  valley  by  damming  up  the  central  stream  often 
mired  the  horses  till  all  hands  were  called  to  haul  out 
the  unfortunate;  and  where  the  mire  was  very  treach- 
erous and  the  surrounding  mountains  too  steep  for 
foothold,  choppers  went  to  work  and  corduroyed  a  trail 
across,  throwing  the  logs  on  branches  that  kept  them 


THE  MOUNTAINEERS  91 

afloat,  and  overlaying  with  moss  to  save  the  horses' 
feet. 

But  the  greatest  cause  of  delay  was  the  windfall, 
pines  and  spruce  of  enormous  girth  pitched  down  by 
landslide  and  storm  into  an  impassable  cheval-de-frise. 
Turn  to  the  right!  A  matted  tangle  of  underbrush 
higher  than  the  horses'  head  bars  the  way!  Turn  to 
the  left !  A  muskeg  where  horses  sink  through  quaking 
moss  to  saddle-girths!  If  the  horses  could  not  be 
driven  around  the  barrier,  the  mountaineers  would  try 
to  force  a  high  jump.  The  high  jump  failing  except 
at  risk  of  broken  legs,  there  was  nothing  to  do  but 
chop  a  passage  through. 

And  were  the  men  carving  a  way  through  the  wil- 
derness only  the  bushwhackers  who  have  pioneered 
other  forest  lands  ?  Of  the  prominent  men  leading 
mountaineers  in  1831,  Vanderburgh  of  the  American 
Fur  Company  was  a  son  of  a  Fifth  New  York  Regi- 
ment  officer  in  the  Revolutionary  War,  and  himself  a 
graduate  of  West  Point.  One  of  the  Kocky  Mountain 
leaders  was  a  graduate  from  a  blacksmith-shop.  An- 
other leader  was  a  descendant  of  the  royal  blood  of 
France.  All  grades  of  life  supplied  material  for  the 
mountaineer;  but  it  was  the  mountains  that  bred  the 
heroism,  that  created  a  new  type  of  trapper — the  most 
purely  American  type,  because  produced  by  purely 
American  conditions. 

Green  River  was  the  rendezvous  for  the  mountain- 
eers in  1831 ;  and  to  Green  River  came  trappers  of  the 
Columbia,  of  the  Three  Forks,  of  the  Missouri,  of  the 
Bighorn  and  Yellowstone  and  Platte.  From  St.  Louis 
came  the  traders  to  exchange  supplies  for  pelts;  and 
from  every  habitable  valley  of  the  mountains  native 


92  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

tribes  to  barter  furs,  sell  horses  for  transport,  carouse 
at  the  merry  meeting  and  spy  on  what  the  white  hunt- 
ers were  doing.  For  a  month  all  was  the  confusion 
of  a  gipsy  camp  or  Oriental  fair. 

French-Canadian  voyageurs  who  had  come  up  to 
raft  the  season's  cargo  down-stream  to  St.  Louis  jostled 
shoulders  with  mountaineers  from  the  Spanish  settle- 
ments to  the  south  and  American  trappers  from  the 
Columbia  to  the  north  and  free  trappers  who  had 
ranged  every  forest  of  America  from  Labrador  to  Mex- 
ico.* Merchants  from  St.  Louis,  like  General  Ashley, 
the  foremost  leader  of  Rocky  Mountain  trappers,  de- 
scendants from  Scottish  nobility  like  Kenneth  Mac- 
Kenzie  of  Fort  Union,  miscellaneous  gentlemen  of  ad- 
venture like  Captain  Bonneville,  or  Wyeth  of  Boston, 
or  Baron  Stuart — all  with  retinues  of  followers  like 
mediaeval  lords — found  themselves  hobnobbing  at  the 
rendezvous  with  mighty  Indian  sachems,  Crows  or 
Pend  d'Oreilles  or  Flat  Heads,  clad  in  little  else  than 
moccasins,  a  buffalo-skin  blanket,  and  a  pompous 
dignity. 

Among  the  underlings  was  a  time  of  wild  revel, 
drinking  daylight  out  and  daylight  in,  decking  them- 
selves in  tawdry  finery  for  the  one  dress  occasion  of  the 
year,  and  gambling  sober  or  drunk  till  all  the  season's 
earnings,  pelts  and  clothing  and  horses  and  traps,  were 
gone. 

The  partners — as  the  Eocky  Mountain  men  called 
themselves  in  distinction  to  the  bourgeois  of  the  French, 
the  factors  of  the  Hudson's  Bay,  the  partisans  of  the 

*  This  is  no  exaggeration.  Smith's  trappers,  who  were  scat- 
tered from  Fort  Vancouver  to  Monterey,  the  Astorians,  Major 
Andrew  Henry's  party — had  all  been  such  wide-ranging  foresters. 


THE  MOUNTAINEERS  93 

American  Fur  Company — held  confabs  over  crumpled 
maps,  planning  the  next  season's  hunt,  drawing  in 
roughly  the  fresh  information  brought  down  each  year 
of  new  regions,  and  plotting  out  all  sections  of  the 
mountains  for  the  different  brigades. 

This  year  a  new  set  of  faces  appeared  at  the  ren- 
dezvous, from  thirty  to  fifty  men  with  full  quota  of 
saddle-horses,  pack-mules,  and  traps.  On  the  traps 
were  letters  that  afterward  became  magical  in  all  the 
Up-Country — A.  F.  C. — American  Fur  Company. 
Leading  these  men  were  Vanderburgh,  who  had  already 
become  a  successful  trader  among  the  Aricaras  and 
had  to  his  credit  one  victory  over  the  Blackfeet;  and 
Drips,  who  had  been  a  member  of  the  old  Missouri  Fur 
Company  and  knew  the  Upper  Platte  well.  But  the 
Rocky  Mountain  men,  who  knew  the  cost  of  life  and 
time  and  money  it  had  taken  to  learn  the  hunting- 
grounds  of  the  Rockies,  doubtless  smiled  at  these  ten- 
derfeet  who  thought  to  trap  as  successfully  in  the  hills 
as  they  had  on  the  plains. 

Two  things  counselled  caution.  Vanderburgh 
would  stop  at  nothing.  Drips  had  married  a  native 
woman  of  the  Platte,  whose  tribe  might  know  the 
hunting-grounds  as  well  as  the  mountaineers.  Hunters 
fraternize  in  friendship  at  holidaying ;  but  they  no  more 
tell  each  other  secrets  than  rival  editors  at  a  banquet. 
Mountaineers  knowing  the  field  like  Bridger  who  had 
been  to  the  Columbia  with  Henry  as  early  as  1822  and 
had  swept  over  the  ranges  as  far  south  as  the  Platte, 
or  Fitzpatrick  *  who  had  made  the  Salt  Lake  region 

*  Fitzpatrick  was  late  in  reaching  the  hunting-ground  this 
year,  owing  to  a  disaster  with  Smith  on  the  way  back  from 
Santa  Fe. 


94  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

his  stamping-ground,  might  smile  at  the  newcomers; 
but  they  took  good  care  to  give  their  rivals  the  slip 
when  hunters  left  the  rendezvous  for  the  hills. 

When  the  mountaineers  scattered,  Fitzpatrick  led 
his  brigade  to  the  region  between  the  Black  Hills  on 
the  east  and  the  Bighorn  Mountains  on  the  west.  The 
first  snowfall  was  powdering  the  hills.  Beaver  were 
beginning  to  house  up  for  the  winter.  Big  game  was 
moving  down  to  the  valley.  The  hunters  had  pitched  a 
central  camp  on  the  banks  of  Powder  Eiver,  gathered 
in  the  supply  of  winter  meat,  and  dispersed  in  pairs 
to  trap  all  through  the  valley. 

But  forest  rangers  like  Yanderburgh  and  Drips 
were  not  to  be  so  easily  foiled.  Every  axe-mark  on 
windfall,  every  camp-fire,  every  footprint  in  the  spongy 
mould,  told  which  way  the  mountaineers  had  gone. 
Fitzpatrick's  hunters  wakened  one  morning  to  find 
traps  marked  A.  F.  C.  beside  their  own  in  the  valley. 
The  trick  was  too  plain  to  be  misunderstood.  The 
American  Fur  Company  might  not  know  the  hunting- 
grounds  of  the  Eockies,  but  they  were  deliberately  dog- 
ging the  mountaineers  to  their  secret  retreats. 

Armed  conflict  would  only  bring  ruin  in  lawsuits. 

Gathering  his  hunters  together  under  cover  of 
snowfall  or  night,  Fitzpatrick  broke  camp,  slipped 
stealthily  out  of  the  valley,  over  the  Bighorn  range, 
across  the  Bighorn  Eiver,  now  almost  impassable  in 
winter,  into  the  pathless  foldings  of  the  Wind  Eiver 
Mountains,  with  their  rampart  walls  and  endless  snow- 
fields,  westward  to  Snake  Eiver  Valley,  three  hundred 
miles  away  from  the  spies.  Instead  of  trapping  from 
east  to  west,  as  he  had  intended  to  do  so  that  the  re- 
turn to  the  rendezvous  would  lead  past  the  caches, 


THE  MOUNTAINEERS  95 

Fitzpatrick  thought  to  baffle  the  spies  by  trapping  from 
west  to  east. 

Having  wintered  on  the  Snake,  he  moved  gradually 
up-stream.  Crossing  southward  over  a  divide,  they  un- 
expectedly came  on  the  very  rivals  whom  they  were 
avoiding,  Vanderburgh  and  Drips,  evidently  working 
northward  on  the  mountaineers'  trail.  By  a  quick 
reverse  they  swept  back  north  in  time  for  the  summer 
rendezvous  at  Pierre's  Hole. 

Who  had  told  Vanderburgh  and  Drips  that  the 
mountaineers  were  to  meet  at  Pierre's  Hole  in  1832? 
Possibly  Indians  and  fur  trappers  who  had  been  notified 
to  come  down  to  Pierre's  Hole  by  the  Rocky  Mountain 
men ;  possibly,  too,  paid  spies  in  the  employment  of  the 
American  Fur  Company. 

Before  supplies  had  come  up  from  St.  Louis  for 
the  mountaineers  Vanderburgh  and  Drips  were  at  the 
rendezvous.  Neither  of  the  ,  rivals  could  flee  away  to 
the  mountains  till  the  supplies  came.  Could  the  moun- 
taineers but  get  away  first,  Vanderburgh  and  Drips 
could  no  longer  dog  a  fresh  trail.  Fitzpatrick  at  once 
set  out  with  all  speed  to  hasten  the  coming  convoy. 
Four  hundred  miles  eastward  he  met  the  supplies,  ex- 
plained the  need  to  hasten  provisions,  and  with  one 
swift  horse  under  him  and  another  swift  one  as  a  relay, 
galloped  back  to  the  rendezvous. 

But  the  Blackfeet  were  ever  on  guard  at  the  moun- 
tain passes  like  cats  at  a  mouse-hole.  Fitzpatrick  had 
ridden  into  a  band  of  hostiles  before  he  knew  the 
danger.  Vaulting  to  the  saddle  of  the  fresh  horse,  he 
fled  to  the  hills,  where  he  lay  concealed  for  three  days. 
Then  he  ventured  out.  The  Indians  still  guarded  the 
passes.  They  must  have  come  upon  him  at  a  night 


96  THE  STORY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

camp  when  his  horse  was  picketed,  for  Fitzpatrick  es- 
caped to  the  defiles  of  the  mountains  with  nothing  but 
the  clothes  on  his  back  and  a  single  ball  in*  his  rifle.  By 
creeping  from  shelter  to  shelter  of  rugged  declivities 
where  the  Indian  ponies  could  not  follow,  he  at  last 
got  across  the  divide,  living  wholly  on  roots  and  berries. 
Swimming  one  of  the  swollen  mountain  rivers,  he  lost 
his  rifle.  Hatless — for  his  hat  had  been  cut  up  to  bind 
his  bleeding  feet  and  protect  them  from  the  rocks — 
and  starving,  he  at  last  fell  in  with  some  Iroquois 
hunters  also  bound  for  the  rendezvous. 

The  convoy  under  Sublette  had  already  arrived  at 
Pierre's  Hole. 

The  famous  battle  between  white  men  and  hostile 
Blackfeet  at  Pierre's  Hole,  which  is  told  elsewhere, 
does  not  concern  the  story  of  rivalry  between  moun- 
taineers and  the  American  Fur  Company.  The  Rocky 
Mountain  men  now  realized  that  the  magical  A.  F.  C. 
was  a  rival  to  be  feared  and  not  to  be  lightly  shaken. 
Some  overtures  were  made  by  the  mountaineers  for  an 
equal  division  of  the  hunting-ground  between  the  two 
great  companies.  These  Vanderburgh  and  Drips  re- 
jected with  the  scorn  of  utter  confidence.  Meanwhile 
provisions  had  not  come  for  the  American  Fur  Com- 
pany. The  mountaineers  not  only  captured  all  trade 
with  the  friendly  Indians,  but  in  spite  of  the  delay 
from  the  fight  with  the  Blackfeet  got  away  to  their 
hunting-grounds  two  weeks  in  advance  of  the  American 
Company. 

What  the  Rocky  Mountain  men  decided  when  the 
American  Company  rejected  the  offer  to  divide  the 
hunting-ground  can  only  be  inferred  from  what  was 
done. 


THE  MOUNTAINEERS  97 

Vanderburgh  and  Drips  knew  that  Fitzpatrick  and 
Bridger  had  led  a  picked  body  of  horsemen  northward 
from  Pierre's  Hole. 

If  the  mountaineers  had  gone  east  of  the  lofty 
Tetons,  their  hunting-ground  would  be  somewhere  be- 
tween the  Yellowstone  and  the  Bighorn.  If  they  had 
gone  south,  one  could  guess  they  would  round  up  some- 
where about  Salt  Lake  where  the  Hudson's  Bay  *  had 
been  so  often  "  relieved  "  of  their  furs  by  the  mountain- 
eers. If  they  had  gone  west,  their  destination  must  be 
on  the  Columbia  or  the  Snake.  If  they  went  north, 
they  would  trap  on  the  Three  Forks  of  the  Upper  Mis- 
souri. 

Therefore  Vanderburgh  and  Drips  cached  all  im- 
pedimenta that  might  hamper  swift  marching,  smiled 
to  themselves,  and  headed  their  horses  for  the  Three 
Forks  of  the  Missouri. 

There  were  Blackfeet,  to  be  sure,  in  that  region; 
and  Blackfeet  hated  Vanderburgh  with  deadly  venom 
because  he  had  once  defeated  them  and  slain  a  great 
warrior.  Also,  the  Blackfeet  were  smarting  from  the 
fearful  losses  of  Pierre's  Hole. 

But  if  the  Eocky  Mountain  men  could  go  unscathed 
among  the  Blackfeet,  why,  so  could  the  American  Fur 
Company ! 

And  Vanderburgh  and  Drips  went ! 

Rival  traders  might  not  commit  murder.  That  led 
to  the  fearful  ruin  of  the  lawsuits  that  overtook  Nor* 

*  By  law  the  Hudson's  Bay  had  no  right  in  this  region  from 
the  passing  of  the  act  forbidding  British  traders  in  the  United 
States.  But,  then,  no  man  had  a  right  to  steal  half  a  million  of 
another's  furs,  which  was  the  record  of  the  Rocky  Mountain 
men. 

8 


98  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

Westers  and  Hudson's  Bay  in  Canada  only  fifteen  years 
before. 

But  the  mountaineers  knew  that  the  Blackfeet 
hated  Henry  Vanderburgh ! 

Corduroyed  muskeg  where  the  mountaineers'  long 
file  of  pack-horses  had  passed,  fresh-chopped  logs  to 
make  a  way  through  blockades  of  fallen  pine,  the  green 
moss  that  hangs  festooned  among  the  spruce  at  cloud- 
line  broken  and  swinging  free  as  if  a  rider  had  passed 
that  way,  grazed  bark  where  the  pack-saddle  had 
brushed  a  tree-trunk,  muddy  hoof-marks  where  the 
young  packers  had  balked  at  fording  an  icy  stream, 
scratchings  on  rotten  logs  where  a  mountaineer's  pegged 
boot  had  stepped — all  these  told  which  way  Fitzpatrick 
and  Bridger  had  led  their  brigade. 

Oh,  it  was  an  easy  matter  to  scent  so  hot  a  trail! 
Here  the  ashes  of  a  camp-fire!  There  a  pile  of  rock 
placed  a  deal  too  carefully  for  nature's  work — the 
cached  furs  of  the  fleeing  rivals !  Besides,  what  with 
canon  and  whirlpool,  there  are  so  very  few  ways  by 
which  a  cavalcade  can  pass  through  mountains  that  the 
simplest  novice  could  have  trailed  Fitzpatrick  and 
Bridger. 

Doubtless  between  the  middle  of  August  when  Van- 
derburgh and  Drips  set  out  on  the  chase  and  the  middle 
of  September  when  they  ran  down  the  fugitives  the 
American  Fur  Company  leaders  had  many  a  laugh  at 
their  own  cleverness. 

They  succeeded  in  overtaking  the  mountaineers  in 
the  valley  of  the  Jefferson,  splendid  hunting-grounds 
with  game  enough  for  two  lines  of  traps,  which  Van- 
derburgh and  Drips  at  once  set  out.  No  swift  flight 
by  forced  marches  this  time!  The  mountaineers  sat 


THE  MOUNTAINEERS  99 

still  for  almost  a  week.  Then  they  casually  moved 
down  the  Jefferson  towards  the  main  Missouri. 

The  hunting-ground  was  still  good.  Weren't  the 
mountaineers  leaving  a  trifle  too  soon?  Should  the 
Americans  follow  or  stay?  Vanderburgh  remained, 
moving  over  into  the  adjacent  valley  and  spreading  his 
traps  along  the  Madison.  Drips  followed  the  moun- 
taineers. 

Two  weeks'  chase  over  utterly  gameless  ground 
probably  suggested  to  Drips  that  even  an  animal  will 
lead  off  on  a  false  scent  to  draw  the  enemy  away  from 
the  true  trail.  At  the  Missouri  he  turned  back  up  the 
Jefferson. 

Wheeling  right  about,  the  mountaineers  at  once 
turned  back  too,  up  the  farthest  valley,  the  Gallatin, 
then  on  the  way  to  the  first  hunting-ground  westward 
over  a  divide  to  the  Madison,  where — ill  luck! — they 
again  met  their  ubiquitous  rival,  Vanderburgh! 

How  Vanderburgh  laughed  at  these  antics  one  may 
guess! 

Post-haste  up  the  Madison  went  the  mountaineers ! 

Should  Vanderburgh  stay  or  follow  ?  Certainly  the 
enemy  had  been  bound  back  for  the  good  hunting- 
grounds  when  they  had  turned  to  retrace  their  way  up 
the  Madison.  If  they  meant  to  try  the  Jefferson,  Van- 
derburgh would  forestall  the  move.  He  crossed  over 
to  the  valley  where  he  had  first  found  them. 

Sure  enough  there  were  camp-fires  on  the  old  hunt- 
ing-grounds, a  dead  buffalo,  from  which  the  hunters 
had  just  fled  to  avoid  Vanderburgh !  If  Vanderburgh 
laughed,  his  laugh  was  short ;  for  there  were  signs  that 
the  buffalo  had  been  slain  by  an  Indian. 

The  trappers  refused  to  hunt  when  there  were 


100  THE  STORY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

Blackfeet  about.  Vanderburgh  refused  to  believe  there 
was  any  danger  of  Blackfeet.  Calling  for  volunteers, 
he  rode  forward  with  six  men. 

First  they  found  a  fire.  The  marauders  must  be 
very  near.  Then  a  dead  buffalo  was  seen,  then  fresh 
tracks,  unmistakably  the  tracks  of  Indians.  But  buf- 
falo were  pasturing  all  around  undisturbed.  There 
could  not  be  many  Indians. 

Determined  to  quiet  the  fears  of  his  men,  Vander- 
burgh pushed  on,  entered  a  heavily  wooded  gulch, 
paused  at  the  steep  bank  of  a  dried  torrent,  descried 
nothing,  and  jumped  his  horse  across  the  bank,  fol- 
lowed by  the  six  volunteers. 

Instantly  the  valley  rang  with  rifle-shots.  A  hun- 
dred hostiles  sprang  from  ambush.  Vanderburgh's 
horse  went  down.  Three  others  cleared  the  ditch  at  a 
bound  and  fled;  but  Vanderburgh  was  to  his  feet,  aim- 
ing his  gun,  and  coolly  calling  out :  "  Don't  run !  Don't 
run ! "  Two  men  sent  their  horses  back  over  the  ditch 
to  his  call,  a  third  was  thrown  to  be  slain  on  the  spot, 
and  Vanderburgh's  first  shot  had  killed  the  nearest  In- 
dian, when  another  volley  from  the  Blackfeet  exacted 
deadly  vengeance  for  the  warrior  Vanderburgh  had 
slain  years  before. 

Panic-stricken  riders  carried  the  news  to  the  wait- 
ing brigade.  Befuge  was  taken  in  the  woods,  where  sen- 
tinels kept  guard  all  night.  The  next  morning,  with 
scouts  to  the  fore,  the  brigade  retreated  cautiously 
towards  some  of  their  caches.  A  second  night  was 
passed  behind  barriers  of  logs;  and  the  third  day  a 
band  of  friendly  Indians  was  encountered,  who  were 
sent  to  bury  the  dead. 

The   Frenchman  they  buried.     Vanderburgh  had 


THE  MOUNTAINEERS  101 

been  torn  to  pieces  and  his  bones  thrown  into  the 
river. 

So  ended  the  merry  game  of  spying  on  the  moun- 
taineers. 

As  for  the  mountaineers,  they  fell  into  the  meshes 
of  their  own  snares;  for  on  the  way  to  Snake  Kiver, 
when  parleying  with  friendly  Blackfeet,  the  accidental 
discharge  of  Bridger's  gun  brought  a  volley  of  arrows 
from  the  Indians,  one  hooked  barb  lodging  in  Bridger's 
shoulder-blade,  which  he  carried  around  for  three  years 
as  a  memento  of  his  own  trickery. 

Fitzpatrick  fared  as  badly.  Instigated  by  the  Amer- 
ican Fur  Company,  the  Crows  attacked  him  within  a 
year,  stealing  everything  that  he  possessed. 


PAET  II 
CHAPTER   IX 

THE   TAKING  OF   THE   BEAVER 

ALL  summer  long  he  had  hung  about  the  fur  com- 
pany trading-posts  waiting  for  the  signs. 

And  now  the  signs  had  come. 

Foliage  crimson. to  the  touch  of  night-frosts.  Crisp 
autumn  days,  spicy  with  the  smell  of  nuts  and  dead 
leaves.  Birds  flying  away  southward,  leaving  the  woods 
silent  as  the  snow-padded  surface  of  a  frozen  pond. 
Hoar-frost  heavier  every  morning;  and  thin  ice  edged 
round  stagnant  pools  like  layers  of  mica. 

Then  he  knew  it  was  time  to  go.  And  through  the 
Northern  forests  moved  a  new  presence — the  trapper. 

Of  the  tawdry,  flash  clothing  in  which  popular  fancy 
is  wont  to  dress  him  he  has  none.  Bright  colours  would 
be  a  danger-signal  to  game.  If  his  costume  has  any 
colour,  it  is  a  waist-belt  or  neck-scarf,  a  toque  or  bright 
handkerchief  round  his  head  to  keep  distant  hunters 
from  mistaking  him  for  a  moose.  For  the  rest,  his 
clothes  are  as  ragged  as  any  old,  weather-worn  gar- 
ments. Sleeping  on  balsam  boughs  or  cooking  over  a 
smoky  fire  will  reduce  the  newness  of  blanket  coat  and 
buckskin  jacket  to  the  dun  shades  of  the  grizzled  forest. 
A  few  days  in  the  open  and  the  trapper  has  the  com- 
plexion of  a  bronzed  tree-trunk. 
102 


THE  TAKING  OF  THE  BEAVER      103 

Like  other  wild  creatures,  this  foster-child  of  the 
forest  gradually  takes  on  the  appearance  and  habits  of 
woodland  life.  Nature  protects  the  ermine  by  turn- 
ing his  russet  coat  of  the  grass  season  to  spotless  white 
for  midwinter — except  the.  jet  tail-tip  left  to  lure  hun- 
gry enemies  and  thus,  perhaps,  to  prevent  the  little 
stoat  degenerating  into  a  sloth.  And  the  forest  looks 
after  her  foster-child  by  transforming  the  smartest  suit 
that  ever  stepped  out  of  the  clothier's  bandbox  to  the 
dull  tints  of  winter  woods. 

This  is  the  seasoning  of  the  man  for  the  work. 
But  the  trapper's  training  does  not  stop  here. 

When  the  birds  have  gone  south  the  silence  of  a 
winter  forest  on  a  windless  day  becomes  tense  enough 
to  be  snapped  by  either  a  man's  breathing  or  the  break- 
ing of  a  small  twig ;  and  the  trapper  acquires  a  habit  of 
moving  through  the  brush  with  noiseless  stealth.  He 
must  learn  to  see  better  than  the  caribou  can  hear  or 
the  wolf  smell — which  means  that  in  keenness  and  ac- 
curacy his  sight  outdistances  the  average  field-glass. 
Besides,  the  trapper  has  learned  how  to  look,  how  to 
see,  and  seeing — discern;  which  the  average  man  can- 
not do  even  through  a  field-glass.  Then  animals  have 
a  trick  of  deceiving  the  enemy  into  mistaking  them  for 
inanimate  things  by  suddenly  standing  stock-still  in 
closest  peril,  unflinching  as  stone;  and  to  match  him- 
self against  them  the  trapper  must  also  get  the  knack 
of  instantaneously  becoming  a  statue,  though  he  feel 
the  clutch  of  bruin's  five-inch  claws. 

And  these  things  are  only  the  a  6  c  of  the  trapper's 
woodcraft. 

One  of  the  best  hunters  in  America  confessed  that 
the  longer  he  trapped  the  more  he  thought  every  animal 


104  THE  STORY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

different  enough  from  the  fellows  of  its  kind  to  be  a 
species  by  itself.  Each  day  was  a  fresh  page  in  the  book 
of  forest-lore. 

It  is  in  the  month  of  May-goosey-geezee,  the  Ojib- 
ways'  trout  month,  corresponding  to  the  late  October 
and  early  November  of  the  white  man,  that  the  trapper 
sets  out  through  the  illimitable  stretches  of  the  forest 
land  and  waste  prairie  south  of  Hudson  Bay,  between 
Labrador  and  the  Upper  Missouri. 

His  birch  canoe  has  been  made  during  the  summer. 
Now,  splits  and  seams,  where  the  bark  crinkles  at  the 
gunwale,  must  be  filled  with  rosin  and  pitch.  A  light 
sled,  with  only  runners  and  cross  frame,  is  made  to 
haul  the  canoo  over  still  water,  where  the  ice  first 
forms.  Sled,  provisions,  blanket,  and  fish-net  are  put 
in  the  canoe,  not  forgetting  the  most  important  part 
of  his  kit — the  trapper's  tools.  Whether  he  hunts  from 
point  to  point  all  winter,  travelling  light  and  taking 
nothing  but  absolute  necessaries,  or  builds  a  central 
lodge,  where  he  leaves  full  store  and  radiates  out  to  the 
hunting-grounds,  at  least  four  things  must  be  in  his 
tool-bag:  a  woodman's  axe;  a  gimlet  to  bore  holes  in 
his  snow-shoe  frame ;  a  crooked  knife — not  the  sheathed 
dagger  of  fiction,  but  a  blade  crooked  hook-shape, 
somewhat  like  a  farrier's  knife,  at  one  end — to  smooth 
without  splintering,  as  a  carpenter's  plane ;  and  a  small 
chisel  to  use  on  the  snow-shoe  frames  and  wooden  con- 
trivances that  stretch  the  pelts. 

If  accompanied  by  a  boy,  who  carries  half  the  pack, 
the  hunter  may  take  more  tools;  but  the  old  trapper 
prefers  to  travel  light.  Fire-arms,  ammunition,  a  com- 
mon hunting-knife,  steel-traps,  a  cotton-factory  tepee, 
a  large  sheet  of  canvas,  locally  known  as  abuckwan,  for 


THE  TAKING  OF  THE  BEAVER      105 

a  shed  tent,  complete  the  trapper's  equipment.  His 
dog  is  not  part  of  the  equipment:  it  is  fellow-hunter 
and  companion. 

From  the  moose  must  come  the  heavy  filling  for  the 
snow-shoes;  but  the  snow-shoes  will  not  be  needed  for 
a  month,  and  there  is  no  haste  about  shooting  an  un- 
found  moose  while  mink  and  musk-rat  and  otter  and 
beaver  are  waiting  to  be  trapped.  With  the  dog  show- 
ing his  wisdom  by  sitting  motionless  as  an  Indian 
bowman,  the  trapper  steps  into  his  canoe  and  pushes 
out. 

Eye  and  ear  alert  for  sign  of  game  or  feeding- 
place,  where  traps  would  be  effective,  the  man  paddles 
silently  on.  If  he  travels  after  nightfall,  the  chances 
are  his  craft  will  steal  unawares  close  to  a  black  head 
above  a  swimming  body.  With  both  wind  and  current 
meeting  the  canoe,  no  suspicion  of  his  presence  catches 
the  scent  of  the  sharp-nosed  swimmer.  Otter  or  beaver, 
it  is  shot  from  the  canoe.  With  a  leap  over  bow  or 
stern — over  his  master's  shoulder  if  necessary,  but 
never  sideways,  lest  the  rebound  cause  an  upset — the 
dog  brings  back  his  quarry.  But  this  is  only  an  aside, 
the  hap-hazard  shot  of  an  amateur  hunter,  not  the  sort 
of  trapping  that  fills  the  company's  lofts  with  fur 
bales. 

While  ranging  the  forest  the  former  season  the 
trapper  picked  out  a  large  birch-tree,  free  of  knots  and 
underbranching,  with  the  full  girth  to  make  the  body 
of  a  canoe  from  gunwale  to  gunwale  without  any  gus- 
sets and  seams.  But  birch-bark  does  not  peel  well  in 
winter.  The  trapper  scratched  the  trunk  with  a  mark 
of  "first-finder-first-owner,"  honoured  by  all  hunters; 
and  came  back  in  the  summer  for  the  bark, 


106  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

Perhaps  it  was  while  taking  the  bark  from  this  tree 
that  he  first  noticed  the  traces  of  beaver.  Channels, 
broader  than  runnels,  hardly  as  wide  as  a  ditch,  have 
been  cut  connecting  pool  with  pool,  marsh  with  lake. 
Here  are  runways  through  the  grass,  where  beaver  have 
dragged  young  saplings  five  times  their  own  length 
to  a  winter  storehouse  near  the  dam.  Trees  lie  felled 
miles  away  from  any  chopper.  Chips  are  scattered 
about  marked  by  teeth  which  the  trapper  knows — 
knows,  perhaps,  from  having  seen  his  dog's  tail  taken 
off  at  a  nip,  or  his  own  finger  amputated  almost  before 
he  felt  it.  If  the  bark  of  a  tree  has  been  nibbled  around, 
like  the  line  a  chopper  might  make  before  cutting,  the 
trapper  guesses  whether  his  coming  has  not  interrupted 
a  beaver  in  the  very  act. 

All  these  are  signs  which  spell  out  the  presence  of 
a  beaver-dam  within  one  night's  travelling  distance; 
for  the  timid  beaver  frequently  works  at  night,  and  will 
not  go  so  far  away  that  forage  cannot  be  brought  in 
before  daylight.  In  which  of  the  hundred  water-ways 
in  the  labyrinth  of  pond  and  stream  where  beavers 
roam  is  this  particular  family  to  be  found? 

Kealizing  that  his  own  life  depends  on  the  life  of 
the  game,  no  true  trapper  will  destroy  wild  creatures 
when  the  mothers  are  caring  for  their  young.  Besides, 
furs  are  not  at  their  prime  when  birch-bark  is  peeled, 
and  the  trapper  notes  the  place,  so  that  he  may  come 
back  when  the  fall  hunt  begins.  Beaver  kittens  stay 
under  the  parental  roof  for  three  years,  but  at  the  end 
of  the  first  summer  are  amply  able  to  look  after  their 
own  skins.  Free  from  nursery  duties,  the  old  ones  can 
now  use  all  the  ingenuity  and  craft  which  nature  gave 
them  for  self-protection.  When  cold  weather  comes 


THE  TAKING  OF  THE  BEAVER      107 

the  beaver  is  fair  game  to  the  trapper.  It  is  wit  against 
wit.  To  be  sure,  the  man  has  superior  strength,  a  gun, 
and  a  treacherous  thing  called  a  trap.  But  his  eyes 
are  not  equal  to  the  beaver's  nose.  And  he  hasn't  that 
familiarity  with  the  woods  to  enable  him  to  pursue, 
which  the  beaver  has  to  enable  it  to  escape.  And  he 
can't  swim  long  enough  under  water  to  throw  enemies 
off  the  scent,  the  way  the  beaver  does. 

Now,  as  he  paddles  along  the  network  of  streams 
which  interlace  Northern  forests,  he  will  hardly  be  like- 
ly to  stumble  on  the  beaver-dam  of  last  summer.  Beav- 
ers do  not  build  their  houses  where  passers-by  will 
stumble  upon  them.  But  all  the  streams  have  been 
swollen  by  fall  rains ;  and  the  trapper  notices  the  mark- 
ings on  every  chip  and  pole  floating  down  the  full  cur- 
rent. A  chip  swirls  past  white  and  fresh  cut.  He 
knows  that  the  rains  have  floated  it  over  the  beaver- 
dam.  Beavers  never  cut  below  their  houses,  but  always 
above,  so  that  the  current  will  carry  the  poles  down- 
stream to  the  dam. 

Leaving  his  canoe-load  behind,  the  trapper  guard- 
edly advances  within  sight  of  the  dam.  If  any  old 
beaver  sentinel  be  swimming  about,  he  quickly  scents 
the  man-smell,  upends  and  dives  with  a  spanking  blow 
of  his  trowel  tail  on  the  water,  which  heliographs  dan- 
ger to  the  whole  community.  He  swims  with  his  webbed 
hind  feet,  the  little  fore  paws  being  used  as  carriers 
or  hanging  limply,  the  flat  tail  acting  the  faintest  bit 
in  the  world  like  a  rudder;  but  that  is  a  mooted  ques- 
tion. The  only  definitely  ascertained  function  of  that 
bat-shaped  appendage  is  to  telegraph  danger  to  com- 
rades. The  beaver  neither  carries  things  on  his  tail, 
nor  plasters  houses  with  it ;  for  the  simple  reason  that 


108  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

the  joints  of  his  caudal  appurtenance  admit  of  only 
slight  sidelong  wigglings  and  a  forward  sweep  between 
his  hind  legs,  as  if  he  might  use  it  as  a  tray  for  food 
while  he  sat  back  spooning  up  mouthfuls  with  his  fore 
paws. 

Having  found  the  wattled  homes  of  the  beaver,  the 
trapper  may  proceed  in  different  ways.  He  may,  after 
the  fashion  of  the  Indian  hunter,  stake  the  stream 
across  above  the  dam,  cut  away  the  obstruction  lower- 
ing the  water,  break  the  conical  crowns  of  the  houses 
on  the  south  side,  which  is  thinnest,  and  slaughter  the 
beavers  indiscriminately  as  they  rush  out.  But  such 
hunting  kills  the  goose  that  lays  the  golden  egg;  and 
explains  why  it  was  necessary  to  prohibit  the  killing 
of  beaver  for  some  years.  In  the  confusion  of  a  wild 
scramble  to  escape  and  a  blind  clubbing  of  heads  there 
was  bootless  destruction.  Old  and  young,  poor  and  in 
prime,  suffered  the  same  fate.  The  house  had  been 
destroyed;  and  if  one  beaver  chanced  to  escape  into 
some  of  the  bank-holes  under  water  or  up  the  side 
channels,  he  could  be  depended  upon  to  warn  all  beaver 
from  that  country.  Only  the  degenerate  white  man 
practises  bad  hunting. 

The  skilled  hunter  has  other  methods. 

If  unstripped  saplings  be  yet  about  the  bank  of 
the  stream,  the  beavers  have  not  finished  laying  up 
their  winter  stores  in  adjacent  pools.  The  trapper  gets 
one  of  his  steel-traps.  Attaching  the  ring  of  this  to  a 
loose  trunk  heavy  enough  to  hold  the  beaver  down  and 
drown  him,  he  places  the  trap  a  few  inches  under  water 
at  the  end  of  a  runway  or  in  one  of  the  channels.  He 
then  takes  out  a  bottle  of  castoreum.  This  is  a  sub- 
stance from  the  glands  of  a  beaver  which  destroys  all 


THE  TAKING  OF  THE  BEAVER      109 

traces  of  the  man-smell.  For  it  the  beavers  have  a 
curious  infatuation,  licking  everything  touched  by  it, 
and  said,  by  some  hunters,  to  be  drugged  into  a  crazy 
stupidity  by  the  very  smell.  The  hunter  daubs  this  on 
his  own  foot-tracks. 

Or,  if  he  finds  tracks  of  the  beaver  in  the  grass 
back  from  the  bank,  he  may  build  an  old-fashioned 
deadfall,  with  which  the  beaver  is  still  taken  in  Lab- 
rador. This  is  the  small  lean-to,  with  a  roof  of  branches 
and  bark — usually  covered  with  snow — slanting  to  the 
ground  on  one  side,  the  ends  either  posts  or  logs,  and 
the  front  an  opening  between  two  logs  wide  enough  to 
admit  half  the  animal's  body.  Inside,  at  the  back,  on 
a  rectangular  stick,  one  part  of  which  bolsters  up  the 
front  log,  is  the  bait.  All  traces  of  the  hunter  are 
smeared  over  with  the  elusive  castoreum.  One  tug  at 
the  bait  usually  brings  the  front  log  crashing  down 
across  the  animal's  back,  killing  it  instantly. 

But  neither  the  steel-trap  nor  the  deadfall  is  wholly 
satisfactory.  When  the  poor  beaver  comes  sniffing 
along  the  castoreum  trail  to  the  steel-trap  and  on  the 
first  splash  into  the  water  feels  a  pair  of  iron  jaws 
close  on  his  feet,  he  dives  below  to  try  and  gain  the 
shelter  of  his  house.  The  log  plunges  after  him,  hold- 
ing him  down  and  back  till  he  drowns ;  and  his  where- 
abouts are  revealed  by  the  upend  of  the  tree. 

But  several  chances  are  in  the  beaver's  favour. 
With  the  castoreum  licks,  which  tell  them  of  some 
other  beaver,  perhaps  looking  for  a  mate  or  lost  cub, 
they  may  become  so  exhilarated  as  to  jump  clear  of 
the  trap.  Or,  instead  of  diving  down  with  the  trap, 
they  may  retreat  back  up  the  bank  and  amputate  the 
imprisoned  foot  with  one  nip,  leaving  only  a  mutilated 


110  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

paw  for  the  hunter.  With  the  deadfall  a  small  beaver 
may  have  gone  entirely  inside  the  snare  before  the  front 
log  falls;  and  an  animal  whose  teeth  saw  through  logs 
eighteen  inches  in  diameter  in  less  than  half  an  hour 
can  easily  eat  a  way  of  escape  from  a  wooden  trap. 
Other  things  are  against  the  hunter.  A  wolverine  may 
arrive  on  the  scene  before  the  trapper  and  eat  the 
finest  beaver  ever  taken;  or  the  trapper  may  discover 
that  his  victim  is  a  poor  little  beaver  with  worthless, 
ragged  fur,  who  should  have  been  left  to  forage  for 
three  or  four  years. 

All  these  risks  can  be  avoided  by  waiting  till  the 
ice  is  thick  enough  for  the  trapper  to  cut  trenches. 
Then  he  returns  with  a  woodman's  axe  and  his  dog. 
By  sounding  the  ice,  he  can  usually  find  where  holes 
have  been  hollowed  out  of  the  banks.  Here  he  drives 
stakes  to  prevent  the  beaver  taking  refuge  in  the  shore 
vaults.  The  runways  and  channels,  where  the  beaver 
have  dragged  trees,  may  be  hidden  in  snow  and  iced 
over;  but  the  man  and  his  dog  will  presently  find 
them. 

The  beaver  always  chooses  a  stream  deep  enough 
not  to  be  frozen  solid,  and  shallow  enough  for  it  to 
make  a  mud  foundation  for  the  house  without  too  much 
work.  Besides,  in  a  deep,  swift  stream,  rains  would 
carry  away  any  house  the  beaver  could  build.  A  trench 
across  the  upper  stream  or  stakes  through  the  ice  pre- 
vent escape  that  way. 

The  trapper  then  cuts  a  hole  in  the  dam.  Falling 
water  warns  the  terrified  colony  that  an  enemy  is  near. 
It  may  be  their  greatest  foe,  the  wolverine,  whose  claws 
will  rip  through  the  frost-hard  wall  as  easily  as  a  bear 


THE  TAKING  OF  THE  BEAVER      111 

delves  for  gophers ;  but  their  land  enemies  cannot  pur- 
sue them  into  water;  so  the  panic-stricken  family — 
the  old  parents,  wise  from  many  such  alarms ;  the  young 
three-year-olds,  who  were  to  go  out  and  rear  families 
for  themselves  in  the  spring;  the  two-year-old  cubbies, 
big  enough  to  be  saucy,  young  enough  to  be  silly ;  and 
the  baby  kittens,  just  able  to  forage  for  themselves 
and  know  the  soft  alder  rind  from  the  tough  old  bark 
unpalatable  as  mud — pop  pell-mell  from  the  high  plat- 
form of  their  houses  into  the  water.  The  water  is  still 
falling.  They  will  presently  be  high  and  dry.  No  use 
trying  to  escape  up-stream.  They  see  that  in  the  first 
minute's  wild  scurry  through  the  shallows.  Besides, 
what's  this  across  the  creek?  Stakes,  not  put  there 
by  any  beaver ;  for  there  is  no  bark  on.  If  they  only  had 
time  now  they  might  cut  a  passage  through;  but  no — 
this  wretched  enemy,  whatever  it  is,  has  ditched  the 
ice  across. 

They  sniff  and  listen.  A  terrible  sound  comes  from 
above — a  low,  exultant,  devilish  whining.  The  man 
has  left  his  dog  on  guard  above  the  dam.  At  that  the 
little  beavers — always  trembling,  timid  fellows — tum- 
ble over  each  other  in  a  panic  of  fear  to  escape  by  way 
of  the  flowing  water  below  the  dam.  But  there  a  new 
terror  assails  them.  A  shadow  is  above  the  ice,  a 
wraith  of  destruction — the  figure  of  a  man  standing 
at  the  dam  with  his  axe  and  club — waiting. 

Where  to  go  now?  They  can't  find  their  bank 
shelters,  for  the  man  has  staked  them  up.  The  little 
fellows  lose  their  presence  of  mind  and  their  heads 
and  their  courage,  and  with  a  blind  scramble  dash  up 
the  remaining  open  runway.  It  is  a  cul-de-sac.  But 
what  does  that  matter?  They  run  almost  to  the  end. 


112  THE  STORY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

They  can  crouch  there  till  the  awful  shadow  goes  away. 
Exactly.  That  is  what  the  man  has  been  counting  on. 
He  will  come  to  them  afterward. 

The  old  beavers  make  no  such  mistake.  They  have 
tried  the  hollow-log  trick  with  an  enemy  pursuing  them 
to  the  blind  end,  and  have  escaped  only  because  some 
other  beaver  was  eaten. 

The  old  ones  know  that  water  alone  is  safety. 

That  is  the  first  and  last  law  of  beaver  life.  They, 
too,  see  that  phantom  destroyer  above  the  ice;  but  a 
dash  past  is  the  last  chance.  How  many  of  the  beaver 
escape  past  the  cut  in  the  dam  to  the  water  below,  de- 
pends on  the  dexterity  of  the  trapper's  aim.  But  cer- 
tainly, for  the  most,  one  blow  is  the  end;  and  that  one 
blow  is  less  cruel  to  them  than  the  ravages  of  the  wolf 
or  wolverine  in  spring,  for  these  begin  to  eat  before 
they  kill. 

A  signal,  and  the  dog  ceases  to  keep  guard  above 
the  dam.  Where  is  the  runway  in  which  the  others 
are  hiding?  The  dog  scampers  round  aimlessly,  but 
begins  to  sniff  and  run  in  a  line  and  scratch  and  whim- 
per. The  man  sees  that  the  dog  is  on  the  trail  of  sag- 
ging snow,  and  the  sag  betrays  ice  settling  down  where 
a  channel  has  run  dry.  The  trapper  cuts  a  hole  across 
the  river  end  of  the  runway  and  drives  down  stakes. 
The  young  beavers  are  now  prisoners. 

The  human  mind  can't  help  wondering  why  the  fool- 
ish youngsters  didn't  crouch  below  the  ice  above  the 
dam  and  lie  there  in  safe  hiding  till  the  monster  went 
away.  This  may  be  done  by  the  hermit  beavers — fel- 
lows who  have  lost  their  mates  and  go  through  life 
inconsolable;  or  sick  creatures,  infested  by  parasites 
and  turned  off  to  house  in  the  river  holes ;  or  fat,  selfish 


THE  TAKING  OP  THE  BEAVER      113 

ladies,  who  don't  want  the  trouble  of  training  a  family. 
Whatever  these  solitaries  are — naturalists  and  hunters 
differ — they  have  the  wit  to  keep  alive;  but  the  poor 
little  beavers  rush  right  into  the  jaws  of  death.  Why 
do  they?  For  the  same  reason  probably,  if  they  could 
answer,  that  people  trample  each  other  to  death  when 
there  is  an  alarm  in  a  crowd. 

They  cower  in  the  terrible  pen,  knowing  nothing 
at  all  about  their  hides  being  valued  all  the  way  from 
fifty  cents  to  three  dollars,  according  to  the  quality; 
nothing  about  the  dignity  of  being  a  coin  of  the  realm 
in  the  Northern  wilderness,  where  one  beaver-skin  sets 
the  value  for  mink,  otter,  marten,  bear,  and  all  other 
skins,  one  pound  of  tobacco,  one  kettle,  five  pounds  of 
shot,  a  pint  of  brandy,  and  half  a  yard  of  cloth;  noth- 
ing about  the  rascally  Indians  long  ago  bartering  forty 
of  their  hides  for  a  scrap  of  iron  and  a  great  com- 
pany sending  one  hundred  thousand  beaver-skins  in  a 
single  year  to  make  hats  and  cloaks  for  the  courtiers 
of  Europe;  nothing  about  the  laws  of  man  forbidding 
the  killing  of  beaver  till  their  number  increase. 

All  the  little  beaver  remembers  is  that  it  opened 
its  eyes  to  daylight  in  the  time  of  soft,  green  grasses ; 
and  that  as  soon  as  it  got  strong  enough  on  a  milk  diet 
to  travel,  the  mother  led  the  whole  family  of  kittens — 
usually  three  or  four — down  the  slanting  doorway  of 
their  dim  house  for  a  swim;  and  that  she  taught  them 
how  to  nibble  the  dainty,  green  shrubs  along  the  bank ; 
and  then  the  entire  colony  went  for  the  most  glorious, 
pell-mell  splash  up-stream  to  fresh  ponds.  No  more 
sleeping  in  that  stifling  lodge;  but  beds  in  soft  grass 
like  a  goose-nest  all  night,  and  tumbling  in  the  water 
9 


114  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

all  day,  diving  for  the  roots  of  the  lily-pads.  But  the 
old  mother  is  always  on  guard,  for  the  wolves  and  bears 
are  ravenous  in  spring.  Soon  the  cubs  can  cut  the 
hardening  bark  of  alder  and  willow  as  well  as  their 
two-year-old  brothers;  and  the  wonderful  thing  is — 
if  a  tooth  breaks,  it  grows  into  perfect  shape  inside  of 
a  week. 

By  August  the  little  fellows  are  great  swimmers, 
and  the  colony  begins  the  descent  of  the  stream  for 
their  winter  home.  If  unmolested,  the  old  dam  is 
chosen ;  but  if  the  hated  man-smell  is  there,  new  water- 
ways are  sought.  Burrows  and  washes  and  channels 
and  retreats  are  cleaned  out.  Trees  are  cut  and  a  great 
supply  of  branches  laid  up  for  winter  store  near  the 
lodge,  not  a  chip  of  edible  bark  being  wasted.  Just 
before  the  frost  they  begin  building  or  repairing  the 
dam.  Each  night's  frost  hardens  the  plastered  clay 
till  the  conical  wattled  roof — never  more  than  two 
feet  thick — will  support  the  weight  of  a  moose. 

All  work  is  done  with  mouth  and  fore  paws,  and 
not  the  tail.  This  has  been  finally  determined  by  ob- 
serving the  Marquis  of  Bute's  colony  of  beavers.  If 
the  family — the  old  parents  and  three  seasons'  off- 
spring— be  too  large  for  the  house,  new  chambers  are 
added.  In  height  the  house  is  seldom  more  than  five 
feet  from  the  base,  and  the  width  varies.  In  building 
a  new  dam  they  begin  under  water,  scooping  out  clay, 
mixing  this  with  stones  and  sticks  for  the  walls,  and 
hollowing  out  the  dome  as  it  rises,  like  a  coffer-dam, 
except  that  man  pumps  out  water  and  the  beaver  scoops 
out  mud.  The  domed  roof  is  given  layer  after  layer 
of  clay  till  it  is  cold-proof.  Whether  the  houses  have 
one  door  or  two  is  disputed;  but  the  door  is  always  at 


THE  TAKING  OF  THE  BEAVER      115 

the  end  of  a  sloping  incline  away  from  the  land  side, 
with  a  shelf  running  round  above,  which  serves  as  the 
living-room.  Differences  in  the  houses,  breaks  below 
water,  two  doors  instead  of  one,  platforms  like  an  oven 
instead  of  a  shelf,  are  probably  explained  by  the  con- 
tinual abrasion  of  the  current.  By  the  time  the  ice 
forms  the  beavers  have  retired  to  their  houses  for  the 
winter,  only  coming  out  to  feed  on  their  winter  stores 
and  get  an  airing. 

But  this  terrible  thing  has  happened ;  and  the  young 
beavers  huddle  together  under  the  ice  of  the  canal, 
bleating  with  the  cry  of  a  child.  They  are  afraid  to 
run  back;  for  the  crunch  of  feet  can  be  heard.  They 
are  afraid  to  go  forward;  for  the  dog  is  whining  with 
a  glee  that  is  fiendish  to  the  little  beavers.  Then  a 
gust  of  cold  air  comes  from  the  rear  and  a  pole  prods 
forward. 

The  man  has  opened  a  hole  to  feel  where  the  hiding 
beavers  are,  and  with  little  terrified  yelps  they  scuttle 
to  the  very  end  of  the  runway.  By  this  time  the  dog 
is  emitting  howls  of  triumph.  For  hours  he  has  been 
boxing  up  his  wolfish  ferocity,  and  now  he  gives  vent 
by  scratching  with  a  zeal  that  would  burrow  to  the 
middle  of  earth. 

The  trapper  drives  in  more  stakes  close  to  the  blind 
end  of  the  channel,  and  cuts  a  hole  above  the  prison 
of  the  beaver.  He  puts  dows  his  arm.  One  by  one 
they  are  dragged  out  by  the  tail ;  and  that  finishes  the 
little  beaver — sacrificed,  like  the  guinea-pigs  and  rab- 
bits of  bacteriological  laboratories,  to  the  necessities 
of  man.  Only,  this  death  is  swifter  and  less  painful. 
A  prolonged  death-struggle  with  the  beaver  would 
probably  rob  the  trapper  of  half  his  fingers.  Very 


116  THE  STORY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

often  the  little  beavers  with  poor  fur  are  let  go.  If 
the  dog  attempts  to  capture  the  frightened  runaways 
by  catching  at  the  conspicuous  appendage  to  the  rear, 
that  dog  is  likely  to  emerge  from  the  struggle  minus  a 
tail,  while  the  beaver  runs  off  with  two. 

Trappers  have  curious  experiences  with  beaver  kit- 
tens which  they  take  home  as  pets.  When  young  they 
are  as  easily  domesticated  as  a  cat,  and  become  a  nuis- 
ance with  their  love  of  fondling.  But  to  them,  as  to 
the  hunter,  comes  what  the  Indians  call  "  the-sickness- 
of -long-thinking,"  the  gipsy  yearning  for  the  wilds. 
Then  extraordinary  things  happen.  The  beaver  are  apt 
to  avenge  their  comrades'  death.  One  old  beaver  trap- 
per of  New  Brunswick  related  that  by  June  the  beavers 
became  so  restless,  he  feared  their  escape  and  put  them 
in  cages.  They  bit  their  way  out  with  absurd  ease. 

He  then  tried  log  pens.  They  had  eaten  a  hole 
through  in  a  night.  Thinking  to  get  wire  caging,  he 
took  them  into  his  lodge,  and  they  seemed  contented 
enough  while  he  was  about;  but  one  morning  he 
wakened  to  find  a  hole  eaten  through  the  door,  and 
the  entire  round  of  birch-bark,  which  he  had  staked 
out  ready  for  the  gunwales  and  ribbing  of  his  canoe — 
bark  for  which  he  had  travelled  forty  miles — chewed 
into  shreds.  The  beavers  had  then  gone  up-stream, 
which  is  their  habit  in  spring. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE  MAKING  OF  THE  MOCCASINS 

IT  is  a  grim  joke  of  the  animal  world  that  the  lazy 
moose  is  the  moose  that  gives  wings  to  the  feet  of  the 
pursuer.  When  snow  comes  the  trapper  must  have 
snow-shoes  and  moccasins.  For  both,  moose  supplies 
the  best  material. 

Bees  have  their  drones,  beaver  their  hermits,  and 
moose  a  ladified  epicure  who  draws  off  from  the  feed- 
ing-yards of  the  common  herd,  picks  out  the  sweetest 
browse  of  the  forest,  and  gorges  herself  till  fat  as  a 
gouty  voluptuary.  While  getting  the  filling  for  his 
snow-shoes,  the  trapper  also  stocks  his  larder;  and  if 
he  can  find  a  spinster  moose,  he  will  have  something 
better  than  shredded  venison  and  more  delicately  fla- 
voured than  finest  teal. 

Sledding  his  canoe  across  shallow  lakelets,  now 
frozen  like  rock,  still  paddling  where  there  is  open  way, 
the  trapper  continues  to  guide  his  course  up  the  water- 
ways. Big  game,  he  knows,  comes  out  to  drink  at  sun- 
rise and  sunset ;  and  nearly  all  the  small  game  frequents 
the  banks  of  streams  either  to  fish  or  to  prey  on  the 
fisher. 

Each  night  he  sleeps  in  the  open  with  his  dog  on 
guard;  or  else  puts  up  the  cotton  tepee,  the  dog  curl- 
ing outside  the  tent  flap,  one  ear  awake.  And  each 

117 


118  THE  STORY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

night  a  net  is  set  for  the  white-fish  that  are  to  supply 
breakfast,  feed  the  dog,  and  provide  heads  for  the  traps 
placed  among  rocks  in  mid-stream,  or  along  banks 
where  dainty  footprints  were  in  the  morning's  hoar- 
frost. Brook  trout  can  still  be  got  in  the  pools  below 
waterfalls;  but  the  trapper  seldom  takes  time  now  to 
use  the  line,  depending  on  his  gun  and  fish-net. 

During  the  Indian's  white-fish  month — the  white 
man's  November — the  weather  has  become  colder  and 
colder;  but  the  trapper  never  indulges  in  the  big  log 
fire  that  delights  the  heart  of  the  amateur  hunter. 
That  would  drive  game  a  week's  tracking  from  his 
course.  Unless  he  wants  to  frighten  away  nocturnal 
prowlers,  a  little,  chip  fire,  such  as  the  fishermen  of 
the  Banks  use  in  their  dories,  is  all  the  trapper  allows 
himself. 

First  snow  silences  the  rustling  leaves.  First  frost 
quiets  the  flow  of  waters.  Except  for  the  occasional 
splitting  of  a  sap-frozen  tree,  or  the  far  howl  of  a 
wolf -pack,  there  is  the  stillness  of  death.  And  of  all 
quiet  things  in  the  quiet  forest,  the  trapper  is  the 
quietest. 

As  winter  closes  in  the  ice-skim  of  the  large  lakes 
cuts  the  bark  canoe  like  a  knife.  The  canoe  is  aban- 
doned for  snow-shoes  and  the  cotton  tepee  for  more 
substantial  shelter. 

If  the  trapper  is  a  white  man  he  now  builds  a  lodge 
near  the  best  hunting-ground  he  has  found.  Around 
this  he  sets  a  wide  circle  of  traps  at  such  distances 
their  circuit  requires  an  entire  day,  and  leads  the  trap- 
per out  in  one  direction  and  back  in  another,  without 
retracing  the  way.  Sometimes  such  lodges  run  from 
valley  to  valley.  Each  cabin  is  stocked ;  and  the  hunter 


THE  MAKING  OF  THE  MOCCASINS  119 

sleeps  where  night  overtakes  him.  But  this  plan  needs 
two  men;  for  if  the  traps  are  not  closely  watched,  the 
wolverine  will  rifle  away  a  priceless  fox  as  readily  as  he 
eats  a  worthless  musk-rat.  The  stone  fire-place  stands 
at  one  end.  Moss,  clay,  and  snow  clink  up  the  logs. 
Parchment  across  a  hole  serves  as  window.  Poles  and 
brush  make  the  roof,  or  perhaps  the  remains  of  the 
cotton  tent  stretched  at  a  steep  angle  to  slide  off  the 
accumulating  weight  of  snow. 

But  if  the  trapper  is  an  Indian,  or  the  white  man 
has  a  messenger  to  carry  the  pelts  marked  with  his 
name  to  a  friendly  trading-post,  he  may  not  build  a 
lodge ;  but  move  from  hunt  to  hunt  as  the  game  changes 
feeding-ground.  In  this  case  he  uses  the  abuckwan — 
canvas — for  a  shed  tent,  with  one  side  sloping  to  the 
ground,  banked  by  brush  and  snow,  the  other  facing  the 
fire,  both  tent  and  fire  on  such  a  slope  that  the  smoke 
drifts  out  while  the  heat  reflects  in.  Pine  and  balsam 
boughs,  with  the  wood  end  pointing  out  like  sheaves 
in  a  stook,  the  foliage  converging  to  a  soft  centre,  form 
the  trapper's  bed.  . 

The  snow  is  now  too  deep  to  travel  without  snow- 
shoes.  The  frames  for  these  the  trapper  makes  of  ash, 
birch,  or  best  of  all,  the  mackilcwatick — tamarack — 
curving  the  easily  bent  green  wood  up  at  one  end, 
canoe  shape,  and  smoothing  the  barked  wood  at  the 
bend,  like  a  sleigh  runner,  by  means  of  the  awkward 
couieau  croche,  as  the  French  hunter  calls  his  crooked 
knife. 

In  style,  the  snow-shoe  varies  with  the  hunting- 
ground.  On  forested,  rocky,  hummocky  land,  the  shoe 
is  short  to  permit  short  turns  without  entanglement. 
Oval  and  broad,  rather  than  long  and  slim,  it  makes 


120      THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

up  in  width  what  it  lacks  in  length  to  support  the  hunt- 
er's weight  above  the  snow.  And  the  toe  curve  is 
slight ;  for  speed  is  impossible  on  bad  ground.  To  save 
the  instep  from  jars,  the  slip  noose  may  be  padded  like 
a  cowboy's  stirrup. 

On  the  prairie,  where  the  snowy  reaches  are  un- 
broken as  air,  snow-shoes  are  wings  to  the  hunter's 
heels.  They  are  long,  and  curved,  and  narrow,  and 
smooth  enough  on  the  runners  for  the  hunter  to  sit 
on  their  rear  ends  and  coast  downhill  as  on  a  toboggan. 
If  a  snag  is  struck  midway,  the  racquets  may  bounce 
safely  over  and  glissade  to  the  bottom;  or  the  toe  may 
catch,  heels  fly  over  head,  and  the  hunter  land  with  his 
feet  noosed  in  frames  sticking  upright  higher  than  his 
neck. 

Any  trapper  can  read  the  story  of  a  hunt  from  snow- 
shoes.  Eound  and  short:  east  of  the  Great  Lakes. 
Slim  and  long:  from  the  prairie.  Padding  for  the 
instep:  either  rock  ground  or  long  runs.  Filling  of 
hide  strips  with  broad  enough  interspaces  for  a  small 
foot  to  slip  through:  from  the  wet,  heavily  packed, 
snow  region  of  the  Atlantic  coast,  for  trapping  only, 
never  the  chase,  small  game,  not  large.  Lace  ties,  in- 
stead of  a  noose  to  hold  the  foot :  the  amateur  hunter. 
Atibisc,  a  fine  filling  taken  from  deer  or  caribou  for  the 
heel  and  toe;  with  askimoneidb,  heavy,  closely  inter- 
laced, membraneous  filling  from  the  moose  across  the 
centre  to  bear  the  brunt  of  wear ;  long  enough  for  speed, 
short  enough  to  turn  short:  the  trapper  knows  he  is 
looking  at  the  snow-shoe  of  the  craftsman.  This  is 
the  sort  he  must  have  for  himself. 

The  first  thing,  then — a  moose  for  the  heavy  fill- 
ing; preferably  a  spinster  moose;  for  she  is  too  lazy 


THE  MAKING  OF  THE  MOCCASINS  121 

to  run  from  a  hunter  who  is  not  yet  a  Mercury;  and 
she  will  furnish  him  with  a  banquet  fit  for  kings. 

Neither  moose  call  nor  birch  horn,  of  which  won- 
ders are  told,  will  avail  now.  The  mating  season  is 
well  past.  Even  if  an  old  moose  responded  to  the  call, 
the  chances  are  his  flesh  would  be  unfit  for  food.  It 
would  be  a  wasted  kill,  contrary  to  the  principles  of 
the  true  trapper. 

Every  animal  has  a  sign  language  as  plain  as  print. 
The  trapper  has  hardly  entered  the  forest  before  he 
begins  to  read  this  language.  Broad  hoof-marks  are 
on  the  muskeg — quaking  bog,  covered  with  moss — over 
which  the  moose  can  skim  as  if  on  snow-shoes,  where 
a  horse  would  sink  to  the  saddle.  Park-like  glades  at 
the  heads  of  streams,  where  the  moose  have  spent  the 
summer  browsing  on  twigs  and  wallowing  in  water 
holes  to  get  rid  of  sand  flies,  show  trampled  brush  and 
stripped  twigs  and  rubbed  bark. 

Coming  suddenly  on  a  grove  of  quaking  aspens,  a 
saucy  jay  has  fluttered  up  with  a  noisy  call — an  alarm 
note;  and  something  is  bounding  off  to  hiding  in  a 
thicket  on  the  far  side  of  the  grove.  The  wis-kat-jan, 
or  whisky  jack,  as  the  white  men  call  it,  who  always 
hangs  about  the  moose  herds,  has  seen  the  trapper  and 
sounded  the  alarm. 

In  August,  when  the  great,  palmated  horns,  which 
budded  out  on  the  male  in  July,  are  yet  in  the  velvet, 
the  trapper  finds  scraps  of  furry  hair  sticking  to  young 
saplings.  The  vain  moose  has  been  polishing  his  ant- 
lers, preparatory  to  mating.  Later,  there  is  a  great 
whacking  of  horns  among  the  branches.  The  moose, 
spoiling  for  a  fight,  in  moose  language  is  challenging 


122  THE  STORY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

his  rivals  to  battle.  Wood-choppers  have  been  inter- 
rupted by  the  apparition  of  a  huge,  palmated  head 
through  a  thicket.  Mistaking  the  axe  for  his  rival's 
defiance,  the  moose  arrives  on  the  scene  in  a  mood  of 
blind  rage  that  sends  the  chopper  up  a  tree,  or  back 
to  the  shanty  for  his  rifle. 

But  the  trapper  allows  these  opportunities  to  pass. 
He  is  not  ready  for  his  moose  until  winter  compels 
the  abandoning  of  the  canoe.  Then  the  moose  herds 
are  yarding  up  in  some  sheltered  feeding-ground. 

It  is  not  hard  for  the  trapper  to  find  a  moose  yard. 
There  is  the  tell-tale  cleft  footprint  in  the  snow.  There 
are  the  cast-off  antlers  after  the  battles  have  been 
fought — the  female  moose  being  without  horns  and  en- 
tirely dependent  on  speed  and  hearing  and  smell  for 
protection.  There  is  the  stripped,  overhead  twig, 
where  a  moose  has  reared  on  hind  legs  and  nibbled  a 
branch  above.  There  is  the  bent  or  broken  sapling 
which  a  moose  pulled  down  with  his  mouth  and  then 
held  down  with  his  feet  while  he  browsed.  This  and 
more  sign  language  of  the  woods — too  fine  for  the 
language  of  man — lead  the  trapper  close  on  the  haunts 
of  a  moose  herd.  But  he  does  not  want  an  ordinary 
moose.  He  is  keen  for  the  solitary  track  of  a  haughty 
spinster.  And  he  probably  comes  on  the  print  when  he 
has  almost  made  up  his  mind  to  chance  a  shot  at  one 
of  the  herd  below  the  hill,  where  he  hides.  He  knows 
the  trail  is  that  of  a  spinster.  It  is  unusually  heavy; 
and  she  is  always  fat.  It  drags  clumsily  over  the 
snow;  for  she  is  lazy.  And  it  doesn't  travel  straight 
away  in  a  line  like  that  of  the  roving  moose;  for  she 
loiters  to  feed  and  dawdle  out  of  pure  indolence. 

And  now  the  trapper  knows  how  a  hound  on  a  hot 


THE  MAKING  OF  THE  MOCCASINS  123 

scent  feels.  He  may  win  his  prize  with  the  ease  of  put- 
ting out  his  hand  and  taking  it — sighting  his  rifle  and 
touching  the  trigger.  Or,  by  the  blunder  of  a  hair's 
breadth,  he  may  daily  track  twenty  weary  miles  for  a 
week  and  come  back  empty  at  his  cartridge-belt,  empty 
below  his  cartridge-belt,  empty  of  hand,  and  full,  full 
of  rage  at  himself,  though  his  words  curse  the  moose. 
He  may  win  his  prize  in  one  of  two  ways :  (1)  by  run- 
ning the  game  to  earth  from  sheer  exhaustion;  (2)  or 
by  a  still  hunt. 

The  straightaway  hunt  is  more  dangerous  to  the 
man  than  the  moose.  Even  a  fat  spinster  can  outdis- 
tance a  man  with  no  snow-shoes.  And  if  his  persever- 
ance lasts  longer  than  her  strength — for  though  a  moose 
swings  out  in  a  long-stepping,  swift  trot,  it  is  easily 
tired — the  exhausted  moose  is  a. moose  at  bay;  and  a 
moose  at  bay  rears  on  her  hind  legs  and  does  defter 
things  with  the  flattening  blow  of  her  fore  feet  than 
an  exhausted  man  can  do  with  a  gun.  The  blow  of  a 
cleft  hoof  means  something  sharply  split,  wherever  that 
spreading  hoof  lands.  And  if  the  something  wriggles 
on  the  snow  in  death-throes,  the  moose  pounds  upon 
it  with  all  four  feet  till  the  thing  is  still.  Then  she 
goes  on  her  way  with  eyes  ablaze  and  every  shaggy  hair 
bristling. 

The  contest  was  even  and  the  moose  won. 

Apart  from  the  hazard,  there  is  a  barbarism  about 
this  straightaway  chase,  which  repels  the  trapper.  It 
usually  succeeds  by  bogging  the  moose  in  crusted  snow, 
or  a  waterhole — and  then,  Indian  fashion,  a  slaughter ; 
and  no  trapper  kills  for  the  sake  of  killing,  for  the 
simple  practical  reason  that  his  own  life  depends  on 
the  preservation  of  game. 


124  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPEE 

A  slight  snowfall  and  the  wind  in  his  face  are 
ideal  conditions  for  a  still  hunt.  One  conceals  him. 
The  other  carries  the  man-smell  from  the  game. 

Which  way  does  the  newly-discovered  footprint  run  ? 
More  flakes  are  in  one  hole  than  the  other.  He  fol- 
lows the  trail  till  he  has  an  idea  of  the  direction  the 
moose  is  taking;  for  the  moose  runs  straightaway,  not 
circling  and  doubling  back  on  cold  tracks  like  the  deer, 
but  marching  direct  to  the  objective  point,  where  it 
turns,  circles  slightly — a  loop  at  the  end  of  a  line — 
and  lies  down  a  little  off  the  trail.  When  the  pursuer, 
following  the  cold  scent,  runs  past,  the  moose  gets 
wind  and  is  off  in  the  opposite  direction  like  a  vanish- 
ing streak. 

Having  ascertained  the  lie  of  the  land,  the  trapper 
leaves  the  line  of  direct  trail  and  follows  in  a  circling 
detour.  Here,  he  finds  the  print  fresher,  not  an  hour 
old.  The  moose  had  stopped  to  browse  and  the  mark- 
ings are  moist  on  a  twig.  The  trapper  leaves  the  trail, 
advancing  always  by  a  detour  to  leeward.  He  is  sure, 
now,  that  it  is  a  spinster.  If  it  had  been  any  other, 
the  moose  would  not  have  been  alone.  The  rest  would 
be  tracking  into  the  leader's  steps;  and  by  the  fresh 
trail  he  knows  for  a  certainty  there  is  only  one.  But 
his  very  nearness  increases  the  risk.  The  wind  may 
shift.  The  snowfall  is  thinning.  This  time,  when  he 
comes  back  to  the  trail,  it  is  fresher  still.  The  hunter 
now  gets  his  rifle  ready.  He  dare  not  put  his  foot  down 
without  testing  the  snow,  lest  a  twig  snap.  He  parts 
a  way  through  the  brush  with  his  hand  and  replaces 
every  branch.  And  when  next  he  conies  back  to  the 
line  of  the  moose's  travel,  there  is  no  trail.  This  is 
what  he  expected.  He  takes  off  his  coat;  his  leggings, 


THE  MAKING  OF  THE  MOCCASINS  125 

if  they  are  loose  enough  to  rub  with  a  leathery  swish; 
his  musk-rat  fur  cap,  if  it  has  any  conspicuous  colour ; 
his  boots,  if  they  are  noisy  and  given  to  crunching.  If 
only  he  aim  true,  he  will  have  moccasins  soon  enough. 
Leaving  all  impedimenta,  he  follows  back  on  his  own 
steps  to  the  place  where  he.  last  saw  the  trail.  Perhaps 
the  saucy  jay  cries  with  a  shrill,  scolding  shriek  that 
sends  cold  shivers  down  the  trapper's  spine.  He  wishes 
he  could  get  his  hands  on  its  wretched  little  neck;  and 
turning  himself  to  a  statue,  he  stands  stone-still  till  the 
troublesome  bird  settles  down.  Then  he  goes  on. 

Here  is  the  moose  trail ! 

He  dare  not  follow  direct.  That  would  lead  past 
her  hiding-place  and  she  would  bolt.  He  resorts  to 
artifice ;  but,  for  that  matter,  so  has  the  moose  resorted 
to  artifice.  The  trapper,  too,  circles  forward,  cutting 
the  moose's  magic  guard  with  transverse  zigzags.  But 
he  no  longer  walks.  He  crouches,  or  creeps,  or  glides 
noiselessly  from  shelter  to  shelter,  very  much  the  way 
a  cat  advances  on  an  unwary  mouse.  He  sinks  to  his 
knees  and  feels  forward  for  snow-pads  every  pace. 
Then  he  is  on  all-fours,  still  circling.  His  detour  has 
narrowed  and  narrowed  till  he  knows  she  must  be  in 
that  aspen  thicket.  The  brush  is  sparser.  She  has 
chosen  her  resting-ground  wisely.  The  man  falls  for- 
ward on  his  face,  closing  in,  closing  in,  wiggling  and 
watching  till — he  makes  a  horrible  discovery.  That 
jay  is  perched  on  the  topmost  bough  of  the  grove ;  and 
the  man  has  caught  a  glimpse  of  something  buff-col- 
oured behind  the  aspens.  It  may  be  a  moose,  or  only 
a  log.  The  untried  hunter  would  fire.  Not  so  the  trap- 
per. Hap-hazard  aim  means  fighting  a  wounded  moose, 
or  letting  the  creature  drag  its  agony  off  to  inaccessible 


126  THE  STORY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

haunts.  The  man  worms  his  way  round  the  thicket, 
sighting  the  game  with  the  noiseless  circling  of  a  hawk 
before  the  drop.  An  ear  blinks.  But  at  that  instant 
the  jay  perks  his  head  to  one  side  with  a  curious  look 
at  this  strange  object  on  the  ground.  In  another  sec- 
ond it  will  be  off  with  a  call  and  the  moose  up. 

His  rifle  is  aimed! 

A  blinding  swish  of  aspen  leaves  and  snow  and 
smoke !  The  jay  is  off  with  a  noisy  whistle.  And  the 
trapper  has  leather  for  moccasins,  and  heavy  filling 
for  his  snow-shoes,  and  meat  for  his  larder. 

But  he  must  still  get  the  fine  filling  for  heel  and 
toe;  and  this  comes  from  caribou  or  deer.  The  deer, 
he  will  still  hunt  as  he  has  still  hunted  the  moose,  with 
this  difference:  that  the  deer  runs  in  circles,  jumping 
back  in  his  own  tracks  leaving  the  hunter  to  follow  a 
cold  scent,  while  it,  by  a  sheer  bound — five — eight — 
twenty  feet  off  at  a  new  angle,  makes  for  the  hiding 
of  dense  woods.  No  one  but  a  barbarian  would  attempt 
to  run  down  a  caribou;  for  it  can  only  be  done  by  the 
shameless  trick  of  snaring  in  crusted  snow,  or  inter- 
cepting while  swimming,  and  then — butchery. 

The  caribou  doesn't  run.  It  doesn't  bound.  It 
floats  away  into  space. 

One  moment  a  sandy-coloured  form,  with  black 
nose,  black  feet,  and  a  glory  of  white  statuary  above 
its  head,  is  seen  against  the  far  reaches  of  snow.  The 
next,  the  form  has  shrunk — and  shrunk — and  shrunk, 
antlers  laid  back  against  its  neck,  till  there  is  a  van- 
ishing speck  on  the  horizon.  The  caribou  has  not  been 
standing  at  all.  It  has  skimmed  out  of  sight;  and  if 
there  is  any  clear  ice  across  the  marshes,  it  literally 


THE  MAKING  OF  THE  MOCCASINS  127 

glides  beyond  vision  from  very  speed.  But,  provided 
no  man-smell  crosses  its  course,  the  caribou  is  vulner- 
able in  its  habits.  Morning  and  evening,  it  comes  back 
to  the  same  watering-place ;  and  it  returns  to  the  same 
bed  for  the  night.  If  the  trapper  can  conceal  himself 
without  crossing  its  trail,  he  easily  obtains  the  fine 
filling  for  his  snow-shoes. 

Moccasins  must  now  be  made. 

The  trapper  shears  off  the  coarse  hair  with  a  sharp 
knife.  The  hide  is  soaked;  and  a  blunter  blade  tears 
away  the  remaining  hairs  till  the  skin  is  white  and 
clean.  The  flesh  side  is  similarly  cleaned  and  the  skin 
rubbed  with  all  the  soap  and  grease  it  will  absorb.  A 
process  of  beating  follows  till  the  hide  is  limber.  Care- 
lessness at  this  stage  makes  buckskin  soak  up  water 
like  a  sponge  and  dry  to  a  shapeless  board.  The  skin 
must  be  stretched  and  pulled  till  it  will  stretch  no 
more.  Frost  helps  the  tanning,  drying  all  moisture 
out;  and  the  skin  becomes  as  soft  as  down,  without  a 
crease.  The  smoke  of  punk  from  a  rotten  tree  gives 
the  dark  yellow  colour  to  the  hide  and  prevents  hard- 
ening. The  skin  is  now  ready  for  the  needle;  and  all 
odd  bits  are  hoarded  away. 

Equipped  with  moccasins  and  snow-shoes,  the  trap- 
per is  now  the  winged  messenger  of  the  tragic  fates 
to  the  forest  world. 


CHAPTER   XI 

THE  INDIAN   TRAPPER 

IT  is  dawn  when  the  Indian  trapper  leaves  his  lodge. 

In  midwinter  of  the  Far  North,  dawn  comes  late. 
Stars,  which  shine  with  a  hard,  clear,  crystal  radiance 
only  seen  in  northern  skies,  pale  in  the  gray  morning 
gloom ;  and  the  sun  comes  over  the  horizon  dim  through 
mists  of  frost-smoke.  In  an  hour  the  frost-mist,  lying 
thick  to  the  touch  like  clouds  of  steam,  will  have 
cleared ;  and  there  will  be  nothing  from  sky-line  to  sky- 
line but  blinding  sunlight  and  snowglare. 

The  Indian  trapper  must  be  far  afield  before  mid- 
day. Then  the  sun  casts  no  man-shadow  to  scare 
game  from  his  snares.  Black  is  the  flag  of  betrayal 
in  northern  midwinter.  It  is  by  the  big  liquid  eye, 
glistening  on  the  snow  like  a  black  marble,  that  the 
trapper  detects  the  white  hare ;  and  a  jet  tail-tip  streak- 
ing over  the  white  wastes  in  dots  and  dashes  tells  him 
the  little  ermine,  whose  coat  must  line  some  emperor's 
coronation  robe,  is  alternately  scudding  over  the  drifts 
and  diving  below  the  snow  with  the  forward  wriggling 
of  a  snake  under  cover.  But  the  moving  man-shadow 
is  bigger  and  plainer  on  the  snow  than  the  hare's  eye 
or  the  ermine's  jet  tip;  so  the  Indian  trapper  sets  out 
in  the  gray  darkness  of  morning  and  must  reach  his 
hunting-grounds  before  high  noon. 
128 


THE  INDIAN  TRAPPER  129 

With  long  snow-shoes,  that  carry  him  over  the  drifts 
in  swift,  coasting  strides,  he  swings  out  in  that  easy, 
ambling,  Indian  trot,  which  gives  never  a  jar  to  the 
runner,  nor  rests  long  enough  for  the  snows  to  crunch 
beneath  his  tread. 

The  old  musket,  which  he  got  in  trade  from  the 
fur  post,  is  over  his  shoulder,  or  swinging  lightly  in 
one  hand.  A  hunter's  knife  and  short-handled  wood- 
man's axe  hang  through  the  beaded  scarf,  belting  in 
his  loose,  caribou  capote.  Powder-horn  and  heavy 
musk-rat  gantlets  are  attached  to  the  cord  about  his 
neck ;  so  without  losing  either  he  can  fight  bare-handed, 
free  and  in  motion,  at  a  moment's  notice.  And  some- 
where, in  side  pockets  or  hanging  down  his  back,  is  his 
skipertogan — a  skin  bag  with  amulet  against  evil, 
matches,  touchwood,  and  a  scrap  of  pemmican.  As  he 
grows  hot,  he  throws  back  his  hood,  running  bare- 
headed and  loose  about  the  chest. 

Each  breath  clouds  to  frost  against  his  face  till 
hair  and  brows  and  lashes  are  fringed  with  frozen 
moisture.  The  white  man  would  hugger  his  face  up 
with  scarf  and  collar  the  more  for  this;  but  the 
Indian  knows  better.  Suddenly  chilled  breath  would 
soak  scarf  and  collar  wet  to  his  skin;  and  his  face 
would  be  frozen  before  he  could  go  five  paces.  But 
with  dry  skin  and  quickened  blood,  he  can  defy  the 
keenest  cold ;  so  he  loosens  his  coat  and  runs  the  faster. 

As  the  light  grows,  dim  forms  shape  themselves  in 
the  gray  haze.  Pine  groves  emerge  from  the  dark, 
wreathed  and  festooned  in  snow.  Cones  and  domes 
and  cornices  of  snow  heap  the  underbrush  and  spread- 
ing larch  boughs.  Evergreens  are  edged  with  white. 
Naked  trees  stand  like  limned  statuary  with  an  ant- 
10 


130      THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

lered  crest  etched  against  the  white  glare.  The  snow 
stretches  away  in  a  sea  of  billowed,  white  drifts  that 
seem  to  heave  and  fall  to  the  motions  of  the  runner, 
mounting  and  coasting  and  skimming  over  the  un- 
broken waste  like  a  bird  winging  the  ocean.  And 
against  this  endless  stretch  of  drifts  billowing  away  to 
a  boundless  circle,  of  which  the  man  is  the  centre,  his 
form  is  dwarfed  out  of  all  proportion,  till  he  looks  no 
larger  than  a  bird  above  the  sea. 

When  the  sun  rises,  strange  colour  effects  are 
caused  by  the  frost  haze.  Every  shrub  takes  fire;  for 
the  ice  drops  are  a  prism,  and  the  result  is  the  same  as 
if  there  had  been  a  star  shower  or  rainfall  of  brilliants. 
Does  the  Indian  trapper  see  all  this  ?  The  white  man 
with  white  man  arrogance  doubts  whether  his  tawny 
brother  of  the  wilds  sees  the  beauty  about  him,  because 
the  Indian  has  no  white  man's  terms  of  expression. 
But  ask  the  bronzed  trapper  the  time  of  day;  and  he 
tells  you  by  the  length  of  shadow  the  sun  casts,  or  the 
degree  of  light  on  the  snow.  Inquire  the  season  of  the 
year;  and  he  knows  by  the  slant  sunlight  coming  up 
through  the  frost  smoke  of  the  southern  horizon. 
And  get  him  talking  about  his  Happy  Hunting- 
Grounds;  and  after  he  has  filled  it  with  the  imple- 
ments and  creatures  and  people  of  the  chase,  he  will 
describe  it  in  the  metaphor  of  what  he  has  seen  at  sun- 
rise and  sunset  and  under  the  Northern  Lights.  He 
does  not  see  these  things  with  the  gabbling  exclama- 
tories  of  a  tourist.  He  sees  them  because  they  sink 
into  his  nature  and  become  part  of  his  mental  furni- 
ture. The  most  brilliant  description  the  writer  ever 
heard  of  the  Hereafter  was  from  an  old  Cree  squaw, 
toothless,  wrinkled  like  leather,  belted  at  the  waist 


THE  INDIAN  TRAPPER  131 

like  a  sack  of  wool,  with  hands  of  dried  parchment, 
and  moccasins  some  five  months  too  odoriferous.  Her 
version  ran  that  Heaven  would  be  full  of  the  music  of 
running  waters  and  south  winds;  that  there  would  al- 
ways be  warm  gold  sunlight  like  a  midsummer  after- 
noon, with  purple  shadows,  where  tired  women  could 
rest;  that  the  trees  would  be  covered  with  blossoms, 
and  all  the  pebbles  of  the  shore  like  dewdrops. 

Pushed  from  the  Atlantic  seaboard  back  over  the 
mountains,  from  the  mountains  to  the  Mississippi, 
west  to  the  Rockies,  north  to  the  Great  Lakes,  all  that 
was  to  be  seen  of  nature  in  America  the  Indian  trapper 
has  seen;  though  he  has  not  understood. 

But  now  he  holds  only  a  fringe  of  hunting-grounds, 
in  the  timber  lands  of  the  Great  Lakes,  in  the  canons 
of  the  Rockies,  and  across  that  northern  land  which 
converges  to  Hudson  Bay,  reaching  west  to  Athabasca, 
east  to  Labrador.  It  is  in  the  basin  of  Hudson  Bay 
regions  that  the  Indian  trapper  will  find  his  last  hunt- 
ing-grounds. Here  climate  excludes  the  white  man, 
and  game  is  plentiful.  Here  Indian  trappers  were 
snaring  before  Columbus  opened  the  doors  of  the  New 
World  to  the  hordes  of  the  Old;  and  here  Indian  trap- 
pers will  hunt  as  long  as  the  race  lasts.  When  there 
is  no  more  game,  the  Indian's  doom  is  sealed ;  but  that 
day  is  far  distant  for  the  Hudson  Bay  region. 

The  Indian  trapper  has  set  few  large  traps.  It  is 
midwinter;  and  by  December  there  is  a  curious  lull 
in  the  hunting.  All  the  streams  are  frozen  like  rock; 
but  the  otter  and  pekan  and  mink  and  marten  have  not 
yet  begun  to  forage  at  random  across  open  field.  Some 
foolish  fish  always  dilly-dally  up-stream  till  the  ice 


132  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

shuts  them  in.  Then  a  strange  thing  is  seen — a  kettle 
of  living  fish;  fish  gasping  and  panting  in  ice-hemmed 
water  that  is  gradually  lessening  as  each  day's  frost 
freezes  another  layer  to  the  ice  walls  of  their  prison. 
The  banks  of  such  a  pond  hole  are  haunted  by  the  otter 
and  his  fisher  friends.  By-and-bye,  when  the  pond  is 
exhausted,  these  lazy  fishers  must  leave  their  safe  bank 
and  forage  across  country.  Meanwhile,  they  are  quiet. 

The  bear,  too,  is  still.  After  much  wandering  and 
fastidious  choosing — for  in  trapper  vernacular  the  bear 
takes  a  long  time  to  please  himself — bruin  found  an 
upturned  stump.  Into  the  hollow  below  he  clawed 
grasses.  Then  he  curled  up  with  his  nose  on  his  toes 
and  went  to  sleep  under  a  snow  blanket  of  gathering 
depth.  Deer,  moose,  and  caribou,  too,  have  gone  off 
to  their  feeding-grounds.  Unless  they  are  scattered  by 
a  wolf -pack  or  a  hunter's  gun,  they  will  not  be  likely  to 
move  till  this  ground  is  eaten  over.  Nor  are  many 
beaver  seen  now.  They  have  long  since  snuggled  into 
their  warm  houses,  where  they  will  stay  till  their  win- 
ter store  is  all  used;  and  their  houses  are  now  hidden 
under  great  depths  of  deepening  snow.  But  the  fox 
and  the  hare  and  the  ermine  are  at  run ;  and  as  long  as 
they  are  astir,  so  are  their  rampant  enemies,  the  lynx 
and  the  wolverine  and  the  wolf -pack,  all  ravenous  from 
the  scarcity  of  other  game  and  greedy  as  spring  crows. 

That  thought  gives  wings  to  the  Indian  trapper's 
heels.  The  pelt  of  a  coyote — or  prairie  wolf — would 
scarcely  be  worth  the  taking.  Even  the  big,  gray  tim- 
ber-wolf would  hardly  be  worth  the  cost  of  the  shot, 
except  for  service  as  a  tepee  mat.  The  white  arctic 
wolf  would  bring  better  price.  The  enormous  black  or 
brown  arctic  wolf  would  be  more  valuable;  but  the 


THE  INDIAN  TRAPPER  133 

value  would  not  repay  the  risk  of  the  hunt.  But  all 
these  worthless,  ravening  rascals  are  watching  the  traps 
as  keenly  as  the  trapper  does ;  and  would  eat  up  a  silver 
fox,  that  would  be  the  fortune  of  any  hunter. 

The  Indian  comes  to  the  brush  where  he  has  set 
his  rabbit  snares  across  a  runway.  His  dog  sniffs  the 
ground,  whining.  The  crust  of  the  snow  is  broken  by 
a  heavy  tread.  The  twigs  are  all  trampled  and  rabbit 
fur  is  fluffed  about.  The  game  has  been  rifled  away. 
The  Indian  notices  several  things.  The  rabbit  has  been 
devoured  on  the  spot.  That  is  unlike  the  wolverine. 
He  would  have  carried  snare,  rabbit  and  all  off  for  a 
guzzle  in  his  own  lair.  The  footprints  have  the  appear- 
ance of  having  been  brushed  over;  so  the  thief  had  a 
bushy  tail.  It  is  not  the  lynx.  There  is  no  trail  away 
from  the  snare.  The  marauder  has  come  with  a  long 
leap  and  gone  with  a  long  leap.  The  Indian  and  his 
dog  make  a  circuit  of  the  snare  till  they  come  on  the 
trail  of  the  intruder;  and  its  size  tells  the  Indian 
whether  his  enemy  be  fox  or  wolf. 

He  sets  no  more  snares  across  that  runway,  for 
the  rabbits  have  had  their  alarm.  Going  through  the 
brush  he  finds  a  fresh  runway  and  sets  a  new  snare. 

Then  his  snow-shoes  are  winging  him  over  the 
drifts  to  the  next  trap.  It  is  a  deadfall.  Nothing  is 
in  it.  The  bait  is  untouched  and  the  trap  left  undis- 
turbed. A  wolverine  would  have  torn  the  thing  to 
atoms  from  very  wickedness,  chewed  the  bait  in  two, 
and  spat  it  out  lest  there  should  be  poison.  The  fox 
would  have  gone  in  and  had  his  back  broken  by  the 
front  log.  And  there  is  the  same  brush  work  over  the 
trampled  snow,  as  if  the  visitor  had  tried  to  sweep  out 
his  own  trail ;  and  the  same  long  leap  away,  clearing  ob- 


134  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

etruction  of  log  and  drift,  to  throw  a  pursuer  off  the 
scent.  This  time  the  Indian  makes  two  or  three  cir- 
cuits ;  but  the  snow  is  so  crusted  it  is  impossible  to  tell 
whether  the  scratchings  lead  out  to  the  open  or  back 
to  the  border  of  snowy-drifted  woods.  If  the  animal 
had  followed  the  line  of  the  traps  by  running  just  inside 
the  brush,  the  Indian  would  know.  But  the  midwinter 
day  is  short,  and  he  has  no  time  to  explore  the  border 
of  the  thicket. 

Perhaps  he  has  a  circle  of  thirty  traps.  Of  that 
number  he  hardly  expects  game  in  more  than  a  dozen. 
If  six  have  a  prize,  he  has  done  well.  Each  time  he 
stops  to  examine  a  trap  he  must  pause  to  cover  all 
trace  of  the  man-smell,  daubing  his  own  tracks  with 
castoreum,  or  pomatum,  or  bears'  grease ;  sweeping  the 
snow  over  every  spot  touched  by  his  hand;  dragging 
the  flesh  side  of  a  fresh  pelt  across  his  own  trail. 

Mid-day  comes,  the  time  of  the  short  shadow;  and 
the  Indian  trapper  has  found  not  a  thing  in  his  traps. 
He  only  knows  that  some  daring  enemy  has  dogged  the 
circle  of  his  snares.  That  means  he  must  kill  the  ma- 
rauder, or  find  new  hunting-grounds.  If  he  had  doubt 
about  swift  vengeance  for  the  loss  of  a  rabbit,  he  has 
none  when  he  comes  to  the  next  trap.  He  sees  what  is 
too  much  for  words :  what  entails  as  great  loss  to  the 
poor  Indian  trapper  as  an  exchange  crash  to  the  white 
man.  One  of  his  best  steel-traps  lies  a  little  distance 
from  the  pole  to  which  it  was  attached.  It  has  been 
jerked  up  with  a  great  wrench  and  pulled  as  far  as 
the  chain  would  go.  The  snow  is  trampled  and  stained 
and  covered  with  gray  fur  as  soft  and  silvery  as  chin- 
chilla. In  the  trap  is  a  little  paw,  fresh  cut,  scarce- 
ly frozen.  He  had  caught  a  silver  fox,  the  fortune  of 


THE  INDIAN  TKAPPEB  135 

which  hunters  dream,  as  prospectors  of  gold,  and  specu- 
lators of  stocks,  and  actors  of  fame.  But  the  wolves, 
the  great,  black  wolves  of  the  Far  North,  with  eyes 
full  of  a  treacherous  green  fire  and  teeth  like  tusks, 
had  torn  the  fur  to  scraps  and  devoured  the  fox  not 
an  hour  before  the  trapper  came. 

He  knows  now  what  his  enemy  is ;  for  he  has  come 
so  suddenly  on  their  trail  he  can  count  four  different 
footprints,  and  claw-marks  of  different  length.  They 
have  fought  about  the  little  fox;  and  some  of  the 
smaller  wolves  have  lost  fur  over  it.  Then,  by  the 
blood-marks,  he  can  tell  they  have  got  under  cover  of 
the  shrub  growth  to  the  right. 

The  Indian  says  none  of  the  words  which  the  white 
man  might  say;  but  that  is  nothing  to  his  credit;  for 
just  now  no  words  are  adequate.  But  he  takes  prompt 
resolution.  After  the  fashion  of  the  old  Mosaic  law, 
which  somehow  is  written  on  the  very  face  of  the  wil- 
derness as  one  of  its  necessities,  he  decides  that  only 
Jife  for  life  will  compensate  such  loss.  The  danger  of 
hunting  the  big,  brown  wolf — he  knows  too  well  to  at- 
tempt it  without  help.  He  will  bait  his  small  traps 
with  poison;  take  out  his  big,  steel  wolf  traps  to-mor- 
row; then  with  a  band  of  young  braves  follow  the 
wolf -pack's  trail  during  this  lull  in  the  hunting  season. 

But  the  animal  world  knows  that  old  trick  of  draw- 
ing a  herring  scent  across  the  trail  of  wise  intentions ; 
and  of  all  the  animal  world,  none  knows  it  better  than 
the  brown  arctic  wolf.  He  carries  himself  with  less 
of  a  hang-dog  air  than  his  brother  wolves,  with  the 
same  pricking  forward  of  sharp,  erect  ears,  the  same 
crouching  trot,  the  same  sneaking,  watchful  green 
eyes ;  but  his  tail,  which  is  bushy  enough  to  brush  out 


136      THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

every  trace  of  his  tracks,  has  not  the  skulking  droop 
of  the  gray  wolf's;  and  in  size  he  is  a  giant  among 
wolves. 

The  trapper  shoulders  his  musket  again,  and  keep- 
ing to  the  open,  where  he  can  travel  fast  on  the  long 
snow-shoes,  sets  out  for  the  next  trap.  The  man-shad- 
ow grows  longer.  It  is  late  in  the  afternoon.  Then 
all  the  shadows  merge  into  the  purple  gloom  of  early 
evening;  but  the  Indian  travels  on;  for  the  circuit  of 
traps  leads  back  to  his  lodge. 

The  wolf  thief  may  not  be  far  off;  so  the  man  takes 
his  musket  from  the  case.  He  may  chance  a  shot  at 
the  enemy.  Where  there  are  woods,  wolves  run  under 
cover,  keeping  behind  a  fringe  of  brush  to  windward. 
The  wind  carries  scent  of  danger  from  the  open,  and 
the  brush  forms  an  ambuscade.  Man  tracks,  where 
man's  dog  might  scent  the  trail  of  a  wolf,  the  wolf 
clears  at  a  long  bound.  He  leaps  over  open  spaces,  if 
he  can ;  and  if  he  can't,  crouches  low  till  he  has  passed 
the  exposure. 

The  trapper  swings  forward  in  long,  straight  strides, 
wasting  not  an  inch  of  ground,  deviating  neither  to 
right  nor  left  by  as  much  space  as  a  white  man  takes 
to  turn  on  his  heels.  Suddenly  the  trapper's  dog  utters 
a  low  whine  and  stops  with  ears  pricked  forward  to- 
wards the  brush.  At  the  same  moment  the  Indian,  who 
has  been  keeping  his  eyes  on  the  woods,  sees  a  form 
rise  out  of  the  earth  among  the  shadows.  He  is  not 
surprised;  for  he  knows  the  way  the  wolf  travels,  and 
the  fox  trap  could  not  have  been  robbed  more  than  an 
hour  ago.  The  man  thinks  he  has  come  on  the  thieves 
going  to  the  next  trap.  That  is  what  the  wolf  means 


THE  INDIAN  TRAPPER  137 

him  to  think.  And  the  man,  too,  dissembles;  for  as 
he  looks  the  form  fades  into  the  gloom,  and  he  decides 
to  run  on  parallel  to  the  brushwood,  with  his  gun  ready. 
Just  ahead  is  a  break  in  the  shrubbery.  At  the  clear- 
ing he  can  see  how  many  wolves  there  are,  and  as  he 
is  heading  home  there  is  little  danger. 

But  at  the  clearing  nothing  crosses.  The  dog  dashes 
off  to  the  woods  with  wild  barking,  and  the  trapper 
scans  the  long,  white  stretch  leading  back  between  the 
bushes  to  a  horizon  that  is  already  dim  in  the  steel 
grays  of  twilight. 

Half  a  mile  down  this  openway,  off  the  homeward 
route  of  his  traps,  a  wolfish  figure  looms  black  against 
the  snow — and  stands !  The  dog  prances  round  and 
round  as  if  he  would  hold  the  creature  for  his  master's 
shot;  and  the  Indian  calculates — "After  all,  there  is 
only  one." 

What  a  chance  to  approach  it  under  cover,  as  it  has 
approached  his  traps!  The  stars  are  already  prick- 
ing the  blue  darkness  in  cold,  steel  points;  and  the 
Northern  Lights  are  swinging  through  the  gloom  like 
mystic  censers  to  an  invisible  Spirit,  the  Spirit  of  the 
still,  white,  wide,  northern  wastes.  It  is  as  clear  as  day. 

One  thought  of  his  loss  at  the  fox  trap  sends  the 
Indian  flitting  through  the  underwoods  like  a  hunted 
partridge.  The  sharp  barkings  of  the  dog  increase  in 
fury,  and  when  the  trapper  emerges  in  the  open,  he 
finds  the  wolf  has  straggled  a  hundred  yards  farther. 
That  was  the  meaning  of  the  dog's  alarm.  Going  back 
to  cover,  the  hunter  again  advances.  But  the  wolf 
keeps  moving  leisurely,  and  each  time  the  man  sights 
his  game  it  is  still  out  of  range  for  the  old-fashioned 
musket.  The  man  runs  faster  now,  determined  to  get 


138  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

abreast  of  the  wolf  and  utterly  heedless  of  the  increas- 
ing danger,  as  each  step  puts  greater  distance  between 
him  and  his  lodge.  He  will  pass  the  wolf,  come  out  in 
front  and  shoot. 

But  when  he  comes  to  the  edge  of  the  woods  to  get 
his  aim,  there  is  no  wolf,  and  the  dog  is  barking  furi- 
ously at  his  own  moonlit  shadow.  The  wolf,  after  the 
fashion  of  his  kind,  has  apparently  disappeared  into 
the  ground,  just  as  he  always  seems  to  rise  from  the 
earth.  The  trapper  thinks  of  the  "  loup-garou,"  but 
no  wolf-demon  of  native  legend  devoured  the  very  real 
substance  of  that  fox. 

The  dog  stops  barking,  gives  a  whine  and  skulks 
to  his  master's  feet,  while  the  trapper  becomes  sud- 
denly aware  of  low-crouching  forms  gliding  through 
the  underbrush.  Eyes  look  out  of  the  dark  in  the  flash 
of  green  lights  from  a  prism.  The  figures  are  in  hiding, 
but  the  moon  is  shining  with  a  silvery  clearness  that 
throws  moving  wolf  shadows  on  the  snow  to  the  trap- 
per's very  feet. 

Then  the  man  knows  that  he  has  been  tricked. 

The  Indian  knows  the  wolf-pack  too  well  to  at- 
tempt flight  from  these  sleuths  of  the  forest.  He 
knows,  too,  one  thing  that  wolves  of  forest  and  prairie 
hold  in  deadly  fear — fire.  Two  or  three  shots  ring  into 
the  darkness  followed  by  a  yelping  howl,  which  tells 
him  there  is  one  wolf  less,  and  the  others  will  hold  off 
at  a  safe  distance.  Contrary  to  the  woodman's  tra- 
ditions of  chopping  only  on  a  windy  day,  the  Indian 
whips  out  his  axe  and  chops  with  all  his  might  till  he 
has  wood  enough  for  a  roaring  fire.  That  will  keep 
the  rascals  away  till  the  pack  goes  off  in  full  cry,  or 
daylight  comes. 


THE  INDIAN  TRAPPER  139 

Whittling  a  limber  branch  from  a  sapling,  the  In- 
dian hastily  makes  a  bow,  and  shoots  arrow  after 
arrow  with  the  tip  in  flame  to  high  mid-air,  hoping  to 
signal  the  far-off  lodges.  But  the  night  is  too  clear. 
The  sky  is  silver  with  stars,  and  moonlight  and  re- 
flected snowglare,  and  the  Northern  Lights  flicker  and 
wane  and  fade  and  flame  with  a  brilliancy  that  dims 
the  tiny  blaze  of  the  arrow  signal.  The  smoke  rising 
from  his  fire  in  a  straight  column  falls  at  the  height 
of  the  trees,  for  the  frost  lies  on  the  land  heavy,  pal- 
pable, impenetrable.  And  for  all  the  frost  is  thick  to 
the  touch,  the  night  is  as  clear  as  burnished  steel. 
That  is  the  peculiarity  of  northern  cold.  The  air 
seems  to  become  absolutely  compressed  with  the  cold; 
but  that  same  cold  freezes  out  and  precipitates  every 
particle  of  floating  moisture  till  earth  and  sky,  moon 
and  stars  shine  with  the  glistening  of  polished  metal. 

A  curious  crackling,  like  the  rustling  of  a  flag  in  a 
gale,  comes  through  the  tightening  silence.  The  intel- 
ligent half-breed  says  this  is  from  the  Northern  Lights. 
The  white  man  says  it  is  electric  activity  in  compressed 
air.  The  Indian  says  it  is  a  spirit,  and  he  may  mutter 
the  words  of  the  braves  in  death  chant : 

"If  I  die,  I  die  valiant, 
I  go  to  death  fearless. 
I  die  a  brave  man. 
I  go  to  those  heroes  who  died  without  fear." 

Hours  pass.  The  trapper  gives  over  shooting  fire 
arrows  into  the  air.  He  heaps  his  fire  and  watches, 
musket  in  hand.  The  light  of  the  moon  is  white  like 
statuary.  The  snow  is  pure  as  statuary.  The  snow- 
edged  trees  are  chiselled  clear  like  statuary;  and  the 


14:0  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

silence  is  of  stone.  Only  the  snap  of  the  blaze,  the 
crackling  of  the  frosted  air,  the  break  of  a  twig  back 
among  the  brush,  where  something  has  moved,  and  the 
little,  low,  smothered  barkings  of  the  dog  on  guard. 

By-and-bye  the  rustling  through  the  brush  ceases; 
and  the  dog  at  last  lowers  his  ears  and  lies  quiet.  The 
trapper  throws  a  stick  into  the  woods  and  sends  the 
dog  after  it.  The  dog  comes  back  without  any  bark- 
ings of  alarm.  The  man  knows  that  the  wolves  have 
drawn  off.  Will  he  wait  out  that  long  Northern  night  ? 
He  has  had  nothing  to  eat  but  the  piece  of  pemmican. 
The  heavy  frost  drowsiness  will  come  presently;  and 
if  he  falls  asleep  the  fire  will  go  out.  An  hour's  run 
will  carry  him  home ;  but  to  make  speed  with  the  snow- 
shoes  he  must  run  in  the  open,  exposed  to  all  watchers. 

When  an  Indian  balances  motives,  the  motive  of 
hunger  invariably  prevails.  Pulling  up  his  hood,  belting 
in  the  caribou  coat  and  kicking  up  the  dog,  the  trapper 
strikes  out  for  the  open  way  leading  back  to  the  line 
of  his  traps,  and  the  hollow  where  the  lodges  have  been 
built  for  shelter  against  wind.  There  is  another  rea- 
son for  building  lodges  in  a  hollow.  Sound  of  the 
hunter  will  not  carry  to  the  game;  but  neither  will 
sound  of  the  game  carry  to  the  hunter. 

And  if  the  game  should  turn  hunter  and  the  man 
turn  hunted!  The  trapper  speeds  down  the  snowy 
slope,  striding,  sliding,  coasting,  vaulting  over  hum- 
mocks of  snow,  glissading  down  the  drifts,  leaping 
rather  than  running.  The  frosty  air  acts  as  a  con- 
ductor to  sound,  and  the  frost  films  come  in  stings 
against  the  face  of  the  man  whose  eye,  ear,  and  touch 
are  strained  for  danger.  It  is  the  dog  that  catches  the 


THE  INDIAN  TRAPPER  141 

first  breath  of  peril,  uttering  a  smothered  "woo! 
woo!"  The  trapper  tries  to  persuade  himself  the 
alarm  was  only  the  far  scream  of  a  wolf -hunted  lynx; 
but  it  comes  again,  deep  and  faint,  like  an  echo  in  a 
dome.  One  glance  over  his  shoulder  shows  him  black 
forms  on  the  snow-crest  against  the  sky. 

He  has  been  tricked  again,  and  knows  how  the  fox 
feels  before  the  dogs  in  full  cry. 

The  trapper  is  no  longer  a  man.    He  is  a  hunted 
thing  with  terror  crazing  his  blood  and  the  sleuth- 
hounds  of  the  wilds   on  his  trail.     Something  goes 
wrong  with  his  snow-shoe.    Stooping  to  right  the  slip- 
strings,  he  sees  that  the  dog's  feet  have  been  cut  by 
the  snow  crust  and  are  bleeding.    It  is  life  for  life  now ; 
the  old,  hard,  inexorable  Mosaic  law,  that  has  no  new 
dispensation  in  the  northern  wilderness,  and  demands 
that  a  beast's  life  shall  not  sacrifice  a  man's. 
One  blow  of  his  gun  and  the  dog  is  dead. 
The  far,  faint  howl  has  deepened  to  a  loud,  exult- 
ant bay.    The  wolf-pack  are  in  full  cry.    The  man  has 
rounded  the  open  alley  between  the  trees  and  is  speed- 
ing down  the  hillside  winged  with  fear.    He  hears  the 
pack  pause  where  the  dog  fell.    That  gives  him  respite. 
The  moon  is  behind,  and  the  man-shadow  flits  before 
on  the  snow  like  an  enemy  heading  him  back.     The 
deep  bay  comes  again,  hard,  metallic,  resonant,  nearer ! 
He  feels  the  snow-shoe  slipping,  but  dare  not  pause. 
A  great  drift  thrusts  across  his  way  and  the  shadow 
in  front  runs  slower.    They  are  gaining  on  him.    He 
hardly  knows  whether  the  crunch  of  snow  and  pantings 
for  breath  are  his  own  or  his  pursuers'.    At  the  crest 
of  the  drift  he  braces  himself  and  goes  to  the  bottom 
with  the  swiftness  of  a  sled  on  a  slide. 


142  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

The  slant  moonlight  throws  another  shadow  on 
the  snow  at  his  heels. 

It  is  the  leader  of  the  pack.  The  man  turns,  and 
tosses  up  his  arms — an  Indian  trick  to  stop  pursuit. 
Then  he  fires.  The  ravening  hunter  of  man  that 
has  been  ambushing  him  half  the  day  rolls  over  with 
a  piercing  howl. 

The  man  is  off  and  away. 

If  he  only  had  the  quick  rifle,  with  which  white  men 
and  a  body-guard  of  guides  hunt  down  a  single  quarry, 
he  would  be  safe  enough  now.  But  the  old  musket  is 
slow  loading,  and  speed  will  serve  him  better  than  an- 
other shot. 

Then  the  snow-shoe  noose  slips  completely  over  his 
instep  to  his  ankle,  throwing  the  racquet  on  edge  and 
clogging  him  back.  Before  he  can  right  it  they  are 
upon  him.  There  is  nothing  for  it  now  but  to  face 
and  fight  to  the  last  breath.  His  hood  falls  back,  and 
he  wheels  with  the  moonlight  full  in  his  eyes  and  the 
Northern  Lights  waving  their  mystic  flames  high  over- 
head. On  one  side,  far  away,  are  the  tepee  peaks  of  the 
lodges;  on  the  other,  the  solemn,  shadowy,  snow- 
wreathed  trees,  like  funeral  watchers — watchers  of 
how  many  brave  deaths  in  a  desolate,  lonely  land  where 
no  man  raises  a  cross  to  him  who  fought  well  and  died 
without  fear! 

The  wolf-pack  attacks  in  two  ways.  In  front,  by 
burying  the  red-gummed  fangs  in  the  victim's  throat; 
in  the  rear,  by  snapping  at  sinews  of  the  runner's  legs 
— called  hamstringing.  Who  taught  them  this  devilish 
ingenuity  of  attack  ?  The  same  hard  master  who  teach- 
es the  Indian  to  be  as  merciless  as  he  is  brave — hunger ! 

Catching  the  muzzle  of  his  gun,  he  beats  back  the 


w 

r 

They  dodge  the  coming  sweep  of  the  uplifted  arm. 


THE  INDIAN  TRAPPER  143 

snapping  red  mouths  with  the  butt  of  his  weapon; 
and  the  foremost  beasts  roll  under. 

But  the  wolves  are  fighting  from  zest  of  the  chase 
now,  as  much  as  from  hunger.  Leaping  over  their  dead 
fellows,  they  dodge  the  coming  sweep  of  the  uplifted 
arm,  and  crouch  to  spring.  A  great  brute  is  reaching 
for  the  forward  bound ;  but  a  mean,  small  wolf  sneaks 
to  the  rear  of  the  hunter's  fighting  shadow.  When  the 
man  swings  his  arm  and  draws  back  to  strike,  this 
miserable  cur,  that  could  not  have  worried  the  trapper's 
dog,  makes  a  quick  snap  at  the  bend  of  his  knees. 

Then  the  trapper's  feet  give  below  him.  The  wolf 
has  bitten  the  knee  sinews  to  the  bone.  The  pack  leap 
up,  and  the  man  goes  down. 

And  when  the  spring  thaw  came,  to  carry  away  the 
heavy  snow  that  fell  over  the  northland  that  night, 
the  Indians  travelling  to  their  summer  hunting-grounds 
found  the  skeleton  of  a  man.  Around  it  were  the  bones 
of  three  dead  wolves ;  and  farther  up  the  hill  were  the 
bleaching  remains  of  a  fourth.* 

*  A  death  almost  similar  to  that  on  the  shores  of  Hudson 
Bay  occurred  in  the  forests  of  the  Boundary,  west  of  Lake  Supe- 
rior, a  few  years  ago.  In  this  case  eight  wolves  were  found 
round  the  body  of  the  dead  trapper,  and  eight  holes  were  empty 
in  his  cartridge-belt — which  tells  its  own  story. 


CHAPTER   XII 
BA'TISTE,  THE  BEAR  HUNTER 

THE  city  man,  who  goes  bear-hunting  with  a  body- 
guard of  armed  guides  in  a  field  where  the  hunted  have 
been  on  the  run  from  the  hunter  for  a  century,  gets  a 
very  tame  idea  of  the  natural  bear  in  its  natural  state. 
Bears  that  have  had  the  fear  of  man  inculcated  with 
longe-range  repeaters  lose  confidence  in  the  prowess  of 
an  aggressive  onset  against  invisible  foes.  The  city 
man  comes  back  from  the  wilds  with  a  legend  of  how 
harmless  bears  have  become.  In  fact,  he  doesn't  be- 
lieve a  wild  animal  ever  attacks  unless  it  is  attacked. 
He  doubts  whether  the  bear  would  go  on  its  life-long 
career  of  rapine  and  death,  if  hunger  did  not  compel 
it,  or  if  repeated  assault  and  battery  from  other  ani- 
mals did  not  teach  the  poor  bear  the  art  of  self-de- 
fence. 

Grisly  old  trappers  coming  down  to  the  frontier 
towns  of  the  Western  States  once  a  year  for  provisions, 
or  hanging  round  the  forts  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Com- 
pany in  Canada  for  the  summer,  tell  a  different  tale. 
Their  hunting  is  done  in  a  field  where  human  presence 
is  still  so  rare  that  it  is  unknown  and  the  bear  treats 
mankind  precisely  as  he  treats  all  other  living  beings 
from  the  moose  and  the  musk-ox  to  mice  and  ants — as 
fair  game  for  his  own  insatiable  maw. 
144 


BATISTE,  THE  BEAR  HUNTER  145 

Old  hunters  may  be  great  spinners  of  yarns — 
"  liars  "  the  city  man  calls  them — but  Montagnais,  who 
squats  on  his  heels  round  the  fur  company  forts  on 
Peace  Kiver,  carries  ocular  evidence  in  the  artificial 
ridge  of  a  deformed  nose  that  the  bear  which  he  slew 
was  a  real  one  with  an  epicurean  relish  for  that  part 
of  Indian  anatomy  which  the  Indian  considers  to  be 
the  most  choice  bit  of  a  moose.*  And  the  Kootenay 
hunter  who  was  sent  through  the  forests  of  Idaho  to 
follow  up  the  track  of  a  lost  brave  brought  back  proof 
of  an  actual  bear;  for  he  found  a  dead  man  lying  across 
a  pile  of  logs  with  his  skull  crushed  in  like  an  egg- 
shell by  something  that  had  risen  swift  and  silent  from 
a  lair  on  the  other  side  of  the  logs  and  dealt  the  climb- 
ing brave  one  quick  terrible  blow.  And  little  blind 
Ba'tiste,  wizened  and  old,  who  spent  the  last  twenty 
years  of  his  life  weaving  grass  mats  and  carving  curi- 
ous little  wooden  animals  for  the  children  of  the  chief 
factor,  could  convince  you  that  the  bears  he  slew  in  his 
young  days  were  very  real  bears,  altogether  different 
from  the  clumsy  bruins  that  gambol  with  boys  and 
girls  through  fairy  books. 

That  is,  he  could  convince  you  if  he  would;  for 
he  usually  sat  weaving  and  weaving  at  the  grasses — 
weaving  bitter  thoughts  into  the  woof  of  his  mat — 
without  a  word.  Eound  his  white  helmet,  such  as 
British  soldiers  wear  in  hot  lands,  he  always  hung  a 
heavy  thick  linen  thing  like  the  frill  of  a  sun-bonnet, 

*  In  further  confirmation  of  Montagnais's  bear,  the  chief  fac- 
tor's daughter,  who  told  me  the  story,  was  standing  in  the  fort 
gate  when  the  Indian  came  running  back  with  a  grisly  pelt  over 
his  shoulder.  When  he  saw  her  his  hands  went  up  to  conceal 
the  price  he  had  paid  for  the  pelt. 
11 


146      THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

coining  over  the  face  as  well  as  the  neck — "  to  keep  de 
sun  off/'  he  would  mumble  out  if  you  asked  him  why. 
More  than  that  of  the  mysterious  frill  worn  on  dark 
days  as  well  as  sunny,  he  would  never  vouch  unless 
some  town-bred  man  patronizingly  pooh-poohed  the 
dangers  of  bear-hunting.  Then  the  grass  strands 
would  tremble  with  excitement  and  the  little  French 
hunter's  body  would  quiver  and  he  would  begin  pour- 
ing forth  a  jumble,  half  habitant  half  Indian  with  a 
mixture  of  all  the  oaths  from  both  languages,  pointing 
and  pointing  at  his  hidden  face  and  bidding  you  look 
what  the  bear  had  done  to  him,  but  never  lifting  the 
thick  frill. 

It  was  somewhere  between  the  tributary  waters 
that  flow  north  to  the  Saskatchewan  and  the  rivers 
that  start  near  the  Saskatchewan  to  flow  south  to  the 
Missouri.  Ba'tiste  and  the  three  trappers  who  were 
with  him  did  not  know  which  side  of  the  boundary 
they  were  on.  By  slow  travel,  stopping  one  day  to 
trap  beaver,  pausing  on  the  way  to  forage  for  meat, 
building  their  canoes  where  they  needed  them  and 
abandoning  the  boats  when  they  made  a  long  overland 
portage,  they  were  three  weeks  north  of  the  American 
fur  post  on  the  banks  of  the  Missouri.  The  hunters 
were  travelling  light-handed.  That  is,  they  were  car- 
rying only  a  little  salt  and  tea  and  tobacco.  For  the 
rest,  they  were  depending  on  their  muskets.  Game 
had  not  been  plentiful. 

Between  the  prairie  and  "the  Mountains  of  the 
Setting  Sun" — as  the  Indians  call  the  Eockies — a 
long  line  of  tortuous,  snaky  red  crawled  sinuously  over 
the  crests  of  the  foothills;  and  all  game — bird  and 


BATISTE,  THE  BEAR  HUNTER  147 

beast — will  shun  a  prairie  fire.  There  was  no  wind. 
It  was  the  dead  hazy  calm  of  Indian  summer  in  the 
late  autumn  with  the  sun  swimming  in  the  purplish 
smoke  like  a  blood-red  shield  all  day  and  the  serpent 
line  of  flame  flickering  and  darting  little  tongues  of 
vermilion  against  the  deep  blue  horizon  all  night,  days 
filled  with  the  crisp  smell  of  withered  grasses,  nights 
as  clear  and  cold  as  the  echo  of  a  bell.  On  a  windless 
plain  there  is  no  danger  from  a  prairie  fire.  One  may 
travel  for  weeks  without  nearing  or  distancing  the 
waving  tide  of  fire  against  a  far  sky;  and  the  four 
trappers,  running  short  of  rations,  decided  to  try  to 
flank  the  fire  coming  around  far  enough  ahead  to 
intercept  the  game  that  must  be  moving  away  from  the 
fire  line. 

Nearly  all  hunters,  through  some  dexterity  of 
natural  endowment,  unconsciously  become  specialists. 
One  man  sees  beaver  signs  where  another  sees  only 
deer.  For  Ba'tiste,  the  page  of  nature  spelled 
B-E-A-R!  Fifteen  bear  in  a  winter  is  a  wonderfully 
good  season's  work  for  any  trapper.  Ba'tiste's  record 
for  one  lucky  winter  was  fifty-four.  After  that  he 
was  known  as  the  bear  hunter.  Such  a  reputation 
affects  keen  hunters  differently.  The  Indian  grows 
cautious  almost  to  cowardice.  Ba'tiste  grew  rash. 
He  would  follow  a  wounded  grisly  to  cover.  He  would 
afterward  laugh  at  the  episode  as  a  joke  if  the  wounded 
brute  had  treed  him.  "For  sure,  good  t'ing  dat  was 
not  de  prairie  dat  tarn,"  he  would  say,  flinging  down 
the  pelt  of  his  foe.  The  other  trappers  with  Indian 
blood  in  their  veins  might  laugh,  but  they  shook  their 
heads  when  his  back  was  turned. 

Flanking  the  fire  by  some  of  the  great  gullies  that 


148  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

cut  the  foothills  like  trenches,  the  hunters  began  to 
find  the  signs  they  had  been  seeking.  For  Ba'tiste, 
the  many  different  signs  had  but  one  meaning.  Where 
some  summer  rain  pool  had  dried  almost  to  a  soft  mud 
hole,  the  other  trappers  saw  little  cleft  foot-marks  that 
meant  deer,  and  prints  like  a  baby's  fingers  that 
spelled  out  the  visit  of  some  member  of  the  weasel 
family,  and  broad  splay-hoof  impressions  that  had 
spread  under  the  weight  as  some  giant  moose  had 
gone  shambling  over  the  quaking  mud  bottom.  But 
Ba'tiste  looked  only  at  a  long  shuffling  foot-mark  the 
length  of  a  man's  fore-arm  with  padded  ball-like  pres- 
sures as  of  monster  toes.  The  French  hunter  would 
at  once  examine  which  way  that  great  foot  had  pointed. 
Were  there  other  impressions  dimmer  on  the  dry  mud? 
Did  the  crushed  spear-grass  tell  any  tales  of  what  had 
passed  that  mud  hole?  If  it  did,  Ba'tiste  would  be 
seen  wandering  apparently  aimlessly  out  on  the  prairie, 
carrying  his  uncased  rifle  carefully  that  the  sunlight 
should  not  glint  from  the  barrel,  zigzagging  up  a  foot- 
hill where  perhaps  wild  plums  or  shrub  berries  hung 
rotting  with  frost  ripeness.  Ba'tiste  did  not  stand  full 
height  at  the  top  of  the  hill.  He  dropped  face  down, 
took  off  his  hat,  or  scarlet  "  safety  "  handkerchief,  and 
peered  warily  over  the  crest  of  the  hill.  If  he  went 
on  over  into  the  next  valley,  the  other  men  would  say 
they  "guessed  he  smelt  bear."  If  he  came  back,  they 
knew  he  had  been  on  a  cold  scent  that  had  faded  indis- 
tinguishably  as  the  grasses  thinned. 

Southern  slopes  of  prairie  and  foothill  are  often 
matted  tangles  of  a  raspberry  patch.  Here  Ba'tiste 
read  many  things — stories  of  many  bears,  of  families, 
of  cubs,  of  old  cross  fellows  wandering  alone.  Great 


BATISTE,  THE  BEAE  HUNTER  149 

slabs  of  stone  had  been  clawed  up  by  mighty  hands. 
Worms  and  snails  and  all  the  damp  clammy  things 
that  cling  to  the  cold  dark  between  stone  and  earth 
had  been  gobbled  up  by  some  greedy  forager.  In  the 
trenched  ravines  crossed  by  the  trappers  lay  many  a 
hidden  forest  of  cottonwood  or  poplar  or  willow.  Here 
was  refuge,  indeed,  for  the  wandering  creatures  of  the 
treeless  prairie  that  rolled  away  from  the  tops  of  the 
cliffs. 

Many  secrets  could  be  read  from  the  clustered 
woods  of  the  ravines.  The  other  hunters  might  look 
for  the  fresh  nibbled  alder  bush  where  a  busy  beaver 
had  been  laying  up  store  for  winter,  or  detect  the  blink 
of  a  russet  ear  among  the  seared  foliage  betraying  a 
deer,  or  wonder  what  flesh-eater  had  caught  the  poor 
jack  rabbit  just  outside  his  shelter  of  thorny  brush. 

The  hawk  soaring  and  dropping — lilting  and  fall- 
ing and  lifting  again — might  mean  that  a  little  mink 
was  "  playing  dead  "  to  induce  the  bird  to  swoop  down 
so  that  the  vampire  beast  could  suck  the  hawk's  blood, 
or  that  the  hawk  was  watching  for  an  unguarded  mo- 
ment to  plunge  down  with  his  talons  in  a  poor  "  fool- 
hen's"  feathers. 

These  things  might  interest  the  others.  They  did 
not  interest  Ba'tiste.  Ba'tiste's  eyes  were  for  lairs  of 
grass  crushed  so  recently  that  the  spear  leaves  were 
even  now  rising;  for  holes  in  the  black  mould  where 
great  ripping  claws  had  been  tearing  up  roots;  for  hol- 
low logs  and  rotted  stumps  where  a  black  bear  might 
have  crawled  to  take  his  afternoon  siesta;  for  punky 
trees  which  a  grisly  might  have  torn  open  to  gobble 
ants'  eggs;  for  scratchings  down  the  bole  of  poplar  or 
cottonwood  where  some  languid  bear  had  been  sharp- 


150  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

ening  his  claws  in  midsummer  as  a  cat  will  scratch 
chair-legs;  for  great  pits  deep  in  the  clay  banks,  where 
some  silly  badger  or  gopher  ran  down  to  the  depths  of 
his  burrow  in  sheer  terror  only  to  have  old  bruin  come 
ripping  and  tearing  to  the  innermost  recesses,  with 
scattered  fur  left  that  told  what  had  happened. 

Some  soft  oozy  moss-padded  lair,  deep  in  the  marsh 
with  the  reeds  of  the  brittle  cat-tails  lifting  as  if  a 
sleeper  had  just  risen,  sets  Ba'tiste's  pulse  hopping — 
jumping — marking  time  in  thrills  like  the  lithe 
bounds  of  a  pouncing  mountain-cat.  With  tread  soft 
as  the  velvet  paw  of  a  panther,  he  steals  through  the 
cane-brake  parting  the  reeds  before  each  pace,  brush- 
ing aside  softly— silently  what  might  crush! — snap! — 
sound  ever  so  slight  an  alarm  to  the  little  pricked  ears 
of  a  shaggy  head  tossing  from  side  to  side — jerk — jerk 
— from  right  to  left — from  left  to  right — always  on 
the  listen! — on  the  listen! — for  prey! — for  prey! 

"  Oh,  for  sure,  that  Ba'tiste,  he  was  but  a  fool- 
hunter,"  as  his  comrades  afterward  said  (it  is  always  so 
very  plain  afterward);  "that  Ba'tiste,  he  was  a  fool! 
What  man  else  go  step — step — into  the  marsh  after  a 
bear! " 

But  the  truth  was  that  Ba'tiste,  the  cunning  rascal, 
always  succeeded  in  coming  out  of  the  marsh,  out  of 
the  bush,  out  of  the  windfall,  sound  as  a  top,  safe  and 
unscratched,  with  a  bear-skin  over  his  shoulder,  the 
head  swinging  pendant  to  show  what  sort  of  fellow  he 
had  mastered. 

"  Dat  wan! — ah! — diable! — he  has  long  sharp  nose 
— he  was  thin — thin  as  a  barrel  all  gone  but  de  hoops 
— ah! — voila! — he  was  wan  ugly  gargon,  was  dat  bear! " 

Where  the  hunters  found  tufts  of  fur  on  the  sage 


BATISTE,  THE  BEAR  HUNTER  151 

brush,  bits  of  skin  on  the  spined  cactus,  the  others 
might  vow  coyotes  had  worried  a  badger.  Ba'tiste 
would  have  it  that  the  badger  had  been  slain  by  a  bear. 
The  cached  carcass  of  fawn  or  doe,  of  course,  meant 
bear;  for  the  bear  is  an  epicure  that  would  have  meat 
gamey.  To  that  the  others  would  agree. 

And  so  the  shortening  autumn  days  with  the  shim- 
mering heat  of  a  crisp  noon  and  the  noiseless  chill  of 
starry  twilights  found  the  trappers  canoeing  leisurely 
up-stream  from  the  northern  tributaries  of  the  Mis- 
souri nearing  the  long  overland  trail  that  led  to  the 
hunting-fields  in  Canada. 

One  evening  they  came  to  a  place  bounded  by  high 
cliff  banks  with  the  flats  heavily  wooded  by  poplar  and 
willow.  Ba'tiste  had  found  signs  that  were  hot — oh! 
so  hot!  The  mould  of  an  uprooted  gopher  hole  was  so 
fresh  that  it  had  not  yet  dried.  This  was  not  a  re- 
gion of  timber-wolves.  What  had  dug  that  hole? 
Not  the  small,  skulking  coyote — the  vagrant  of  prairie 
life!  Oh! — no! — the  coyote  like  other  vagrants  earns 
his  living  without  work,  by  skulking  in  the  wake  of 
the  business-like  badger;  and  when  the  badger  goes 
down  in  the  gopher  hole,  Master  Coyote  stands  near- 
by and  gobbles  up  all  the  stray  gophers  that  bolt  to 
escape  the  invading  badger.*  What  had  dug  the  hole? 
Ba'tiste  thinks  that  he  knows. 

That  was  on  open  prairie.  Just  below  the  cliff  is  an- 
other kind  of  hole — a  roundish  pit  dug  between  moss- 

*  This  phase  of  prairie  life  must  not  be  set  down  to  writer's 
license.  It  is  something  that  every  rider  of  the  plains  can  see  any 
time  he  has  patience  to  rein  up  and  sit  like  a  statue  within  field- 
glass  distance  of  the  gopher  burrows  about  nightfall  when  the 
badgers  are  running. 


152  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TEAPPER 

covered  logs  and  earth  wall,  a  pit  with  grass  clawed 
down  into  it,  snug  and  hidden  and  sheltered  as  a  bird's 
nest.  If  the  pit  is  what  Ba'tiste  thinks,  somewhere  on 
the  banks  of  the  stream  should  be  a  watering-place. 
He  proposes  that  they  beach  the  canoes  and  camp  here. 
Twilight  is  not  a  good  time  to  still  hunt  an  unseen 
bear.  Twilight  is  the  time  when  the  bear  himself 
goes  still  hunting.  Ba'tiste  will  go  out  in  the  early 
morning.  Meantime  if  he  stumbles  on  what  looks  like 
a  trail  to  the  watering-place,  he  will  set  a  trap. 

Camp  is  not  for  the  regular  trapper  what  it  is  for 
the  amateur  hunter — a  time  of  rest  and  waiting  while 
others  skin  the  game  and  prepare  supper. 

One  hunter  whittles  the  willow  sticks  that  are  to 
make  the  camp  fire.  Another  gathers  moss  or  boughs 
for  a  bed.  If  fish  can  be  got,  some  one  has  out  a  line. 
The  kettle  hisses  from  the  cross-bar  between  notched 
sticks  above  the  fire,  and  the  meat  sizzling  at  the  end 
of  a  forked  twig  sends  up  a  flavour  that  whets  every 
appetite.  Over  the  upturned  canoes  bend  a  couple  of 
men  gumming  afresh  all  the  splits  and  seams  against 
to-morrow's  voyage.  Then  with  a  flip-flop  that  tells  of 
the  other  side  of  the  flap-jacks  being  browned,  the  cook 
yodels  in  crescendo  that  "  Sup — per ! — 'a — read — ee ! " 

Supper  over,  a  trap  or  two  may  be  set  in  likely 
places.  The  men  may  take  a  plunge;  for  in  spite  of 
their  tawny  skins,  these  earth-coloured  fellows  have 
closer  acquaintance  with  water  than  their  appearance 
would  indicate.  The  man-smell  is  as  acute  to  the 
beast's  nose  as  the  rank  fur-animal-smell  is  to  the 
man's  nose;  and  the  first  thing  that  an  Indian  who  has 
had  a  long  run  of  ill-luck  does  is  to  get  a  native 
"sweating-bath"  and  make  himself  clean. 


BATISTE,  THE  BEAR  HUNTER  153 

On  the  ripple  of  the  flowing  river  are  the  red  bars 
of  the  camp  fire.  Among  the  willows,  perhaps,  the 
bole  of  some  birch  stands  out  white  and  spectral. 
Though  there  is  no  wind,  the  poplars  shiver  with  a 
fall  of  wan,  faded  leaves  like  snow-flakes  on  the  grave 
of  summer.  Red  bills  and  whisky-jacks  and  lonely 
phoebe-birds  came  fluttering  and  pecking  at  the 
crumbs.  Out  from  the  gray  thicket  bounds  a  cotton- 
tail to  jerk  up  on  his  hind  legs  with  surprise  at  the 
camp  fire.  A  blink  of  his  long  ear,  and  he  has  bounded 
back  to  tell  the  news  to  his  rabbit  family.  Overhead, 
with  shrill  clangour,  single  file  and  in  long  wavering 
V  lines,  wing  geese  migrating  southward  for  the  sea- 
son. The  children's  hour,  has  a  great  poet  called  a 
certain  time  of  day?  Then  this  is  the  hour  of  the 
wilderness  hunter,  the  hour  when  "the  Mountains  of 
the  Setting  Sun  "  are  flooded  in  fiery  lights  from  zone 
to  zenith  with  the  snowy  heights  overtopping  the  far 
rolling  prairie  like  clouds  of  opal  at  poise  in  mid- 
heaven,  the  hour  when  the  camp  fire  lies  on  the  russet 
autumn-tinged  earth  like  a  red  jewel,  and  the  far  line 
of  the  prairie  fire  billows  against  the  darkening  east 
in  a  tide  of  vermilion  flame. 

Unless  it  is  raining,  the  voyageurs  do  not  erect 
their  tent;  for  they  will  sleep  in  the  open,  feet  to  the 
fire,  or  under  the  canoes,  close  to  the  great  earth,  into 
whose  very  fibre  their  beings  seem  to  be  rooted.  And 
now  is  the  time  when  the  hunters  spin  their  yarns  and 
exchange  notes  of  all  they  have  seen  in  the  long  silent 
day.  There  was  the  prairie  chicken  with  a  late  brood 
of  half-grown  clumsy  clucking  chicks  amply  able  to 
take  care  of  themselves,  but  still  clinging  to  the  old 
mother's  care.  "When  the  hunter  came  suddenly  on 


154:  THE  STOEY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

them,  over  the  old  hen  went,  flopping  broken-winged 
to  decoy  the  trapper  till  her  children  could  run  for 
shelter — when — lo! — of  a  sudden,  the  broken  wing  is 
mended  and  away  she  darts  on  both  wings  before  he 
has  uncased  his  gun!  There  are  the  stories  of  bear 
hunters  like  Ba'tiste  sitting  on  the  other  side  of  the 
fire  there,  who  have  been  caught  in  their  own  bear 
traps  and  held  till  they  died  of  starvation  and  their 
bones  bleached  in  the  rusted  steel. 

That  story  has  such  small  relish  for  Ba'tiste  that 
he  hitches  farther  away  from  the  others  and  lies  back 
flat  on  the  ground  close  to  the  willow  under-tangle 
with  his  head  on  his  hand. 

"For  sure,"  says  Ba'tiste  contemptuously,  " no- 
body doesn't  need  no  tree  to  climb  here !  Sacre ! — cry 
wolf! — wolf! — and  for  sure! — diable! — de  beeg  loup- 
garou  will  eat  you  yet! " 

Down  somewhere  from  those  stars  overhead  drops 
a  call  silvery  as  a  flute,  clear  as  a  piccolo— some  night 
bird  lilting  like  a  mote  on  the  far  oceans  of  air.  The 
trappers  look  up  with  a  movement  that  in  other  men 
would  be  a  nervous  start;  for  any  shrill  cry  pierces  the 
silence  of  the  prairie  in  almost  a  stab.  Then  the  men 
go  on  with  their  yarn  telling  of  how  the  Blackfeet 
murdered  some  traders  on  this  very  ground  not  long 
ago  till  the  gloom  gathering  over  willow  thicket  and 
encircling  cliffs  seems  peopled  with  those  marauding 
warriors.  One  man  rises,  saying  that  he  is  "goin'  to 
turn  in  "  and  is  taking  a  step  through  the  dark  to  his 
canoe  when  there  is  a  dull  pouncing  thud.  For  an  in- 
stant the  trappers  thought  that  their  comrade  had 
stumbled  over  his  boat.  But  a  heavy  groan — a  low 
guttural  cry — a  shout  of  "  Help— help— help  Ba'- 


BATISTE,  THE  BEAR  HUNTER  155 

tiste!"  and  the  man  who  had  risen  plunged  into  the 
crashing  cane-brake,  calling  out  incoherently  for  them 
to  "help— help  Ba'tiste!  " 

In  the  confusion  of  cries  and  darkness,  it  was  im- 
possible for  the  other  two  trappers  to  know  what  had 
happened.  Their  first  thought  was  of  the  Indians 
whose  crimes  they  had  been  telling.  Their  second 
was  for  their  rifles — and  they  had  both  sprung  over 
the  fire  where  they  saw  the  third  man  striking — strik- 
ing— striking  wildly  at  something  in  the  dark.  A  low 
worrying  growl — and  they  descried  the  Frenchman 
rolling  over  and  over,  clutched  by  or  clutching  a  huge 
furry  form — hitting — plunging  with  his  knife — strug- 
gling— screaming  with  agony. 

"It's  Ba'tiste!  It's  a  bear!"  shouted  the  third 
man,  who  was  attempting  to  drive  the  brute  off  by 
raining  blows  on  its  head. 

Man  and  bear  were  an  indistinguishable  struggling 
mass.  Should  they  shoot  in  the  half -dark?  Then  the 
Frenchman  uttered  the  scream  of  one  in  death-throes: 
"  Shoot !  —  shoot !  —  shoot  quick !  She's  striking  my 
face ! — she's  striking  my  face " 

And  before  the  words  had  died,  sharp  flashes  of 
light  cleft  the  dark — the  great  beast  rolled  over  with 
a  coughing  growl,  and  the  trappers  raised  their  com- 
rade from  the  ground. 

The  bear  had  had  him  on  his  back  between  her 
teeth  by  the  thick  chest  piece  of  his  double-breasted 
buck-skin.  Except  for  his  face,  he  seemed  uninjured; 
but  down  that  face  the  great  brute  had  drawn  the 
claws  of  her  fore  paw. 

Ba'tiste  raised  his  hands  to  his  face. 

"  Mon  dieu! "  he  asked  thickly,  fumbling  with  both 


156  THE  STORY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

hands,  "what  is  done  to  my  eyes?    Is  the  fire  out?    I 
cannot  see! " 

Then  the  man  who  had  fought  like  a  demon  armed 
with  only  a  hunting-knife  fainted  because  of  what  his 
hands  felt. 


Traitors  there  are  among  trappers  as  among  all 
other  classes,  men  like  those  who  deserted  Glass  on  the 
Missouri,  and  Scott  on  the  Platte,  and  how  many 
others  whose  treachery  will  never  be  known. 

But  Ba'tiste's  comrades  stayed  with  him  on  the 
banks  of  the  river  that  flows  into  the  Missouri.  One 
cared  for  the  blind  man.  The  other  two  foraged  for 
game.  When  the  wounded  hunter  could  be  moved, 
they  put  him  in  a  canoe  and  hurried  down-stream  to 
the  fur  post  before  the  freezing  of  the  rivers.  At  the 
fur  post,  the  doctor  did  what  he  could;  but  a  doctor 
cannot  restore  what  has  been  torn  away.  The  next 
spring,  Ba'tiste  was  put  on  a  pack  horse  and  sent  to 
his  relatives  at  the  Canadian  fur  post.  Here  his  sis- 
ters made  him  the  curtain  to  hang  round  his  helmet 
and  set  him  to  weaving  grass  mats  that  the  days  might 
not  drag  so  wearily. 

Ask  Ba'tiste  whether  he  agrees  with  the  amateur 
hunter  that  bears  never  attack  unless  they  are  at- 
tacked, that  they  would  never  become  ravening  crea- 
tures of  prey  unless  the  assaults  of  other  creatures 
taught  them  ferocity,  ask  Ba'tiste  this  and  something 
resembling  the  snarl  of  a  baited  beast  breaks  from  the 
lipless  face  under  the  veil: 

"  S — s — sz! — "  with  a  quiver  of  inexpressible  rage. 
"  The  bear — it  is  an  animal! — the  bear!— it  is  a  beast! 


BATISTE,  THE  BEAR  HUNTER  157 

— ton  jours! — the  bear! — it  is  a  beast! — always — al- 
ways !  "  And  his  hands  clinch. 

Then  he  falls  to  carving  of  the  little  wooden  ani- 
mals and  weaving  of  sad,  sad,  bitter  thoughts  into  the 
warp  of  the  Indian  mat. 

Are  such  onslaughts  common  among  bears,  or  are 
they  the  mad  freaks  of  the  bear's  nature?  President 
Eoosevelt  tells  of  two  soldiers  bitten  to  death  in  the 
South-West;  and  M.  L'Abbe  Dugast,  of  St.  Boniface, 
Manitoba,  incidentally  relates  an  experience  almost 
similar  to  that  of  Ba'tiste  which  occurred  in  the  North- 
West.  Lest  Ba'tiste's  case  seem  overdrawn,  I  quote 
the  Abbe's  words : 

"  At  a  little  distance  Madame  Lajimoniere  and  the 
other  women  were  preparing  the  tents  for  the  night, 
when  all  at  once  Bouvier  gave  a  cry  of  distress  and 
called  to  his  companions  to  help  him.  At  the  first 
shout,  each  hunter  siezed  his  gun  and  prepared  to  de- 
fend himself  against  the  attack  of  an  enemy;  they  hur- 
ried to  the  other  side  of  the  ditch  to  see  what  was  the 
matter  with  Bouvier,  and  what  he  was  struggling  with. 
They  had  no  idea  that  a  wild  animal  would  come  near 
the  fire  to  attack  a  man  even  under  cover  of  night;  for 
fire  usually  has  the  effect  of  frightening  wild  beasts. 
However,  almost  before  the  four  hunters  knew  what 
had  happened,  they  saw  their  unfortunate  companion 
dragged  into  the  woods  by  a  bear  followed  by  her  two 
cubs.  She  held  Bouvier  in  her  claws  and  struck  him 
savagely  in  the  face  to  stun  him.  As  soon  as  she  saw 
the  four  men  in  pursuit,  she  redoubled  her  fury  against 
her  prey,  tearing  his  face  with  her  claws.  M.  Lajimon- 
iere, who  was  an  intrepid  hunter,  baited  her  with  the 
butt  end  of  his  gun  to  make  her  let  go  her  hold,  as  he 


158      THE  STORY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

dared  not  shoot  for  fear  of  killing  the  man  while  try- 
ing to  save  him,  but  Bouvier,  who  felt  himself  being 
choked,  cried  with  all  his  strength:  '  Shoot;  I  would 
rather  be  shot  than  eaten  alive! '  M.  Lajimoniere 
pulled  the  trigger  as  close  to  the  bear  as  possible, 
wounding  her  mortally.  She  let  go  Bouvier  and  be- 
fore her  strength  was  exhausted  made  a  wild  attack 
upon  M.  Lajimoniere,  who  expected  this  and  as  his  gun 
had  only  one  barrel  loaded,  he  ran  towards  the  canoe, 
where  he  had  a  second  gun  fully  charged.  He  Oiad 
hardly  seized  it  before  the  bear  reached  the  shore  and 
tried  to  climb  into  the  canoe,  but  fearing  no  longer 
to  wound  his  friend,  M.  Lajimoniere  aimed  full  at  her 
breast  and  this  time  she  was  killed  instantly.  As  soon 
as  the  bear  was  no  longer  to  be  feared,  Madame  La- 
jimoniere, who  had  been  trembling  with  fear  during 
the  tumult,  went  to  raise  the  unfortunate  Bouvier, 
who  was  covered  with  wounds  and  nearly  dead.  The 
bear  had  torn  the  skin  from  his  face  with  her  nails 
from  the  roots  of  his  hair  to  the  lower  part  of  his  chin. 
His  eyes  and  nose  were  gone — in  fact  his  features  were 
indiscernible — but  he  was  not  mortally  injured.  His 
wounds  were  dressed  as  well  as  the  circumstances 
would  permit,  and  thus  crippled  he  was  carried  to  the 
Fort  of  the  Prairies,  Madame  Lajimoniere  taking  care 
of  him  all  through  the  journey.  In  time  his  wounds 
were  successfully  healed,  but  he  was  blind  and  infirm  to 
the  end  of  his  life.  He  dwelt  at  the  Fort  of  the  Prai- 
ries for  many  years,  but  when  the  first  missionaries 
reached  Red  River  in  1818,  he  persuaded  his  friends 
to  send  him  to  St.  Boniface  to  meet  the  priests  and 
ended  his  days  in  M.  Provencher's  house.  He  em- 
ployed his  time  during  the  last  years  of  his  life  in  mak- 


BA'TISTE,  THE  BEAR  HUNTER  159 

ing  crosses  and  crucifixes  blind  as  he  was,  but  he  never 
made  any  chefs  d'ceuvre." 

Such  is  bear-hunting  and  such  is  the  nature  of  the 
bear.  And  these  things  are  not  of  the  past.  Wher- 
ever long-range  repeaters  have  not  put  the  fear  of  man 
in  the  animal  heart,  the  bear  is  the  aggressor.  Even 
as  I  write  comes  word  from  a  little  frontier  fur  post 
which  I  visited  in  1901,  of  a  seven-year-old  boy  being 
waylaid  and  devoured  by  a  grisly  only  four  miles  back 
from,  a  transcontinental  railway.  This  is  the  second 
death  from  the  unprovoked  attacks  of  bears  within  a 
month  in  that  country — and  that  month,  the  month  of 
August,  1902,  when  sentimental  ladies  and  gentlemen 
many  miles  away  from  danger  are  sagely  discussing 
whether  the  bear  is  naturally  ferocious  or  not — 
whether,  in  a  word,  it  is  altogether  humane  to  hunt 
bears. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

JOHN  COLTER — FREE  TRAPPEB 

LONG  before  sunrise  hunters  were  astir  in  the  moun- 
tains. 

The  Crows  were  robbers,  the  Blackfeet  murderers; 
and  scouts  of  both  tribes  haunted  every  mountain  defile 
where  a  white  hunter  might  pass  with  provisions  and 
peltries  which  these  rascals  could  plunder. 

The  trappers  circumvented  their  foes  by  setting 
the  traps  after  nightfall  and  lifting  the  game  before 
daybreak. 

Night  in  the  mountains  was  full  of  a  mystery  that 
the  imagination  of  the  Indians  peopled  with  terrors 
enough  to  frighten  them  away.  The  sudden  stilling 
of  mountain  torrent  and  noisy  leaping  cataract  at  sun- 
down when  the  thaw  of  the  upper  snows  ceased,  the 
smothered  roar  of  rivers  under  ice,  the  rush  of  whirl- 
pools through  the  blackness  of  some  far  canon,  the 
crashing  of  rocks  thrown  down  by  unknown  forces,  the 
shivering  echo  that  multiplied  itself  a  thousandfold 
and  ran  "  rocketing  "  from  peak  to  peak  startling  the 
silences — these  things  filled  the  Indian  with  supersti- 
tious fears. 

The  gnomes,  called  in  trapper's  vernacular  "hoo- 
doos  " — great  pillars  of  sandstone  higher  than  a  house, 
left  standing  in  valleys  by  prehistoric  floods — were  to 
160 


JOHN  COLTER— FREE  TRAPPER  161 

the  Crows  and  Blackfeet  petrified  giants  that  only 
awakened  at  night  to  hurl  down  rocks  on  intruding 
mortals.  And  often  the  quiver  of  a  shadow  in  the  night 
wind  gave  reality  to  the  Indian's  fears.  The  purr  of 
streams  over  rocky  bed  was  whispering,  the  queer 
quaking  echoes  of  falling  rocks  were  giants  at  war, 
and  the  mists  rising  from  swaying  waterfalls,  spirit- 
forms  portending  death. 

Morning  came  more  ghostly  among  the  peaks. 

Thick  white  clouds  banked  the  mountains  from  peak 
to  base,  blotting  out  every  scar  and  tor  as  a  sponge 
might  wash  a  slate.  Valleys  lay  blanketed  in  smoking 
mist.  As  the  sun  came  gradually  up  to  the  horizon  far 
away  east  behind  the  mountains,  scarp  and  pinnacle 
butted  through  the  fog,  stood  out  bodily  from  the  mist, 
seemed  to  move  like  living  giants  from  the  cloud  banks. 
"How  could  they  do  that  if  they  were  not  alive?" 
asked  the  Indian.  Elsewhere,  shadows  came  from  sun, 
moon,  starlight,  or  camp-fire.  But  in  these  valleys 
were  pencilled  shadows  of  peaks  upside  down,  shadows 
all  the  colours  of  the  rainbow  pointing  to  the  bottom 
of  the  green  Alpine  lakes,  hours  and  hours  before  any 
sun  had  risen  to  cause  the  shadows.  All  this  meant 
"bad  medicine"  to  the  Indian,  or,  in  white  man's 
language,  mystery. 

Unless  they  were  foraging  in  large  bands,  Crows 
and  Blackfeet  shunned  the  mountains  after  nightfall. 
That  gave  the  white  man  a  chance  to  trap  in  safety. 

Early  one  morning  two  white  men  slipped  out  of 
their  sequestered  cabin  built  in  hiding  of  the  hills  at 
the  head  waters  of  the  Missouri.  Under  covert  of  brush- 
wood lay  a  long  odd-shaped  canoe,  sharp  enough  at  the 
prow  to  cleave  the  narrowest  waters  between  rocks,  so 
12 


162  THE  STORY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

sharp  that  French  voyageurs  gave  this  queer  craft  the 
name  "  canot  a  bee  d'esturgeon  " — that  is,  a  canoe  like 
the  nose  of  a  sturgeon.  This  American  adaptation  of 
the  Frenchman's  craft  was  not  of  birch-bark.  That 
would  be  too  frail  to  essay  the  rock-ribbed  canons  of 
the  mountain  streams.  It  was  usually  a  common  dug- 
out, hollowed  from  a  cottonwood  or  other  light  timber, 
with  such  an  angular  narrow  prow  that  it  could  take 
the  sheerest  dip  and  mount  the  steepest  wave-crest 
where  a  rounder  boat  would  fill  and  swamp.  Dragging 
this  from  cover,  the  two  white  men  pushed  out  on  the 
Jefferson  Fork,  dipping  now  on  this  side,  now  on  that, 
using  the  reversible  double-bladed  paddles  which  only 
an  amphibious  boatman  can  manage.  The  two  men  shot 
out  in  mid-stream,  where  the  mists  would  hide  them 
from  each  shore ;  a  moment  later  the  white  fog  had  en- 
folded them,  and  there  was  no  trace  of  human  pres- 
ence but  the  trail  of  dimpling  ripples  in  the  wake  of 
the  canoe. 

No  talking,  no  whistling,  not  a  sound  to  betray 
them.  And  there  were  good  reasons  why  these  men 
did  not  wish  their  presence  known.  One  was  Potts, 
the  other  John  Colter.  Both  had  been  with  the  Lewis 
and  Clark  exploring  party  of  1804-'05,  when  a  Black- 
foot  brave  had  been  slain  for  horse-thieving  by  the 
first  white  men  to  cross  the  Upper  Missouri.  Besides, 
the  year  before  coming  to  the  Jefferson,  Colter  had 
been  with  the  Missouri  Company's  fur  brigade  under 
Manuel  Lisa,  and  had  gone  to  the  Crows  as  an  emissary 
from  the  fur  company.  While  with  the  Crows,  a  battle 
had  taken  place  against  the  Blackfeet,  in  which  they 
suffered  heavy  loss  owing  to  Colter's  prowess.  That 
made  the  Blackfeet  sworn  enemies  to  Colter. 


JOHN  COLTER— FREE  TRAPPER  163 

Turning  off  the  Jefferson,  the  trappers  headed  their 
canoe  up  a  side  stream,  probably  one  of  those  marshy 
reaches  where  beavers  have  formed  a  swamp  by  dam- 
ming up  the  current  of  a  sluggish  stream.  Such  quiet 
waters  are  favourite  resorts  for  beaver  and  mink  and 
marten  and  pekan.  Setting  their  traps  only  after 
nightfall,  the  two  men  could  not  possibly  have  put  out 
more  than  forty  or  fifty.  Thirty  traps  are  a  heavy  day's 
work  for  one  man.  Six  prizes  out  of  thirty  are  con- 
sidered a  wonderful  run  of  luck;  but  the  empty  traps 
must  be  examined  as  carefully  as  the  successful  ones. 
Many  that  have  been  mauled,  "scented"  by  a  beaver 
scout  and  left,  must  be  replaced.  Others  must  have 
fresh  bait ;  others,  again,  carried  to  better  grounds 
where  there  are  more  game  signs. 

Either  this  was  a  very  lucky  morning  and  the  men 
were  detained  taking  fresh  pelts,  or  it  was  a  very  un- 
lucky morning  and  the  men  had  decided  to  trap  farther 
up-stream ;  for  when  the  mists  began  to  rise,  the  hunt- 
ers were  still  in  their  canoe.  Leaving  the  beaver  mead- 
ow, they  continued  paddling  up-stream  away  from  the 
Jefferson.  A  more  hidden  watercourse  they  could 
hardly  have  found.  The  swampy  beaver-runs  narrowed, 
the  shores  rose  higher  and  higher  into  rampart  walls, 
and  the  dark-shadowed  waters  came  leaping  down  in 
the  lumpy,  uneven  runnels  of  a  small  canon.  You  can 
always  tell  whether  the  waters  of  a  canon  are  com- 
pressed or  not,  whether  they  come  from  broad,  swampy 
meadows  or  clear  snow  streams  smaller  than  the  canon. 
The  marsh  waters  roll  down  swift  and  black  and  turbid, 
raging  against  the  crowding  walls  ;  the  snow  streams 
leap  clear  and  foaming  as  champagne,  and  are  in  too 
great  a  hurry  to  stop  and  quarrel  with  the  rocks.  It  is 


164  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

altogether  likely  these  men  recognised  swampy  water, 
and  were  ascending  the  canon  in  search  of  a  fresh 
beaver-marsh;  or  they  would  not  have  continued  pad- 
dling six  miles  above  the  Jefferson  with  daylight  grow- 
ing plainer  at  every  mile.  First  the  mist  rose  like  a 
smoky  exhalation  from  the  river;  then  it  flaunted 
across  the  rampart  walls  in  banners;  then  the  far 
mountain  peaks  took  form  against  the  sky,  islands  in  a 
sea  of  fog;  then  the  cloud  banks  were  floating  in  mid- 
heaven  blindingly  white  from  a  sun  that  painted  each 
canon  wall  in  the  depths  of  the  water. 

How  much  farther  would  the  canon  lead?  Should 
they  go  higher  up  or  not?  Was  it  wooded  or  clear 
plain  above  the  walls?  The  man  paused.  What  was 
that  noise  ? 

"  Like  buffalo,"  said  Potts. 

"Might  be  Blackfeet,"  answered  Colter. 

No.  What  would  Blackfeet  be  doing,  riding  at  a 
pace  to  make  such  thunder  so  close  to  a  canon?  It 
was  only  a  buffalo  herd  stampeding  on  the  annual 
southern  run.  Again  Colter  urged  that  the  noise  might 
be  from  Indians.  It  would  be  safer  for  them  to  re- 
treat at  once.  At  which  Potts  wanted  to  know  if 
Colter  were  afraid,  using  a  stronger  word — "  coward." 

Afraid?  Colter  afraid?  Colter  who  had  remained 
behind  Lewis  and  Clark's  men  to  trap  alone  in  the 
wilds  for  nearly  two  years,  who  had  left  Manuel  Lisa's 
brigade  to  go  alone  among  the  thieving  Crows,  whose 
leadership  had  helped  the  Crows  to  defeat  the  Black- 
feet? 

Anyway,  it  would  now  be  as  dangerous  to  go  back 
as  forward.  They  plainly  couldn't  land  here.  Let  them 
go  ahead  where  the  walls  seemed  to  slope  down  to 


JOHN  COLTER— FREE  TRAPPER  165 

shore.  Two  or  three  strokes  sent  the  canoe  round  an 
elbow  of  rock  into  the  narrow  course  of  a  creek.  In- 
stantly out  sprang  five  or  six  hundred  Blackfeet  war- 
riors with  weapons  levelled  guarding  both  sides  of  the 
stream. 

An  Indian  scout  had  discovered  the  trail  of  the  white 
men  and  sent  the  whole  band  scouring  ahead  to  inter- 
cept them  at  this  narrow  pass.  The  chief  stepped  for- 
ward, and  with  signals  that  were  a  command  beckoned 
the  hunters  ashore. 

As  is  nearly  always  the  case,  the  rash  man  was  the 
one  to  lose  his  head,  the  cautious  man  the  one  to  keep 
his  presence  of  mind.  Potts  was  for  an  attempt  at 
flight,  when  every  bow  on  both  sides  of  the  river  would 
have  let  fly  a  shot.  Colter  was  for  accepting  the  situ- 
ation, trusting  to  his  own  wit  for  subsequent  escape. 

Colter,  who  was  acting  as  steersman,  sent  the  canoe 
ashore.  Bottom  had  not  grated  before  a  savage 
snatched  Potts's  rifle  from  his  hands.  Springing  ashore, 
Colter  forcibly  wrested  the  weapon  back  and  coolly 
handed  it  to  Potts. 

But  Potts  had  lost  all  the  rash  courage  of  a  mo- 
ment before,  and  with  one  push  sent  the  canoe  into 
mid-stream.  Colter  shouted  at  him  to  come  back — 
come  back!  Indians  have  more  effective  arguments. 
A  bow-string  twanged,  and  Potts  screamed  out,  "  Col- 
ter, I  am  wounded !  " 

Again  Colter  urged  him  to  land.  The  wound 
turned  Pott's  momentary  fright  to  a  paroxysm  of  rage. 
Aiming  his  rifle,  he  shot  his  Indian  assailant  dead.  If 
it  was  torture  that  he  feared,  that  act  assured  him  at 
least  a  quick  death ;  for,  in  Colter's  language,  man  and 
boat  were  instantaneously  "  made  a  riddle  of." 


166      THE  STORY  OF  THE  TKAPPER 

No  man  admires  courage  more  than  the  Indian; 
and  the  Blackfeet  recognised  in  their  captive  one  who 
had  been  ready  to  defend  his  comrade  against  them  all, 
and  who  had  led  the  Crows  to  victory  against  their  own 
band. 

The  prisoner  surrendered  his  weapons.  He  was 
stripped  naked,  but  neither  showed  sign  of  fear  nor 
made  a  move  to  escape.  Evidently  the  Blackfeet  could 
have  rare  sport  with  this  game  white  man.  His  life 
in  the  Indian  country  had  taught  him  a  few  words  of 
the  Blackfoot  language.  He  heard  them  conferring  as 
to  how  he  should  be  tortured  to  atone  for  all  that  the 
Blackfeet  had  suffered  at  white  men's  hands.  One  war- 
rior suggested  that  the  hunter  be  set  up  as  a  target  and 
shot  at.  Would  he  then  be  so  brave? 

But  the  chief  shook  his  head.  That  was  not  game 
enough  sport  for  Blackfeet  warriors.  That  would  be 
letting  a  man  die  passively.  And  how  this  man  could 
fight  if  he  had  an  opportunity!  How  he  could  resist 
torture  if  he  had  any  chance  of  escaping  the  torture ! 

But  Colter  stood  impassiye  and  listened.  Doubt- 
less he  regretted  having  left  the  well-defended  bri- 
gades of  the  fur  companies  to  hunt  alone  in  the  wilder- 
ness. But  the  fascination  of  the  wild  life  is  as  a  gam- 
bler's vice — the  more  a  man  has,  the  more  he  wants. 
Had  not  Colter  crossed  the  Rockies  with  Lewis  and 
Clark  and  spent  two  years  in  the  mountain  fastnesses  ? 
Yet  when  he  reached  the  Mandans  on  the  way  home, 
the  revulsion  against  all  the  trammels  of  civilization 
moved  him  so  strongly  that  he  asked  permission  to 
return  to  the  wilderness,  where  he  spent  two  more 
years.  Had  he  not  set  out  for  St.  Louis  a  second  time, 
met  Lisa  coming  up  the  Missouri  with  a  brigade  of 


JOHN  COLTER— FREE  TRAPPER  167 

hunters,  and  for  the  third  time  turned  his  face  to  the 
wilderness?  Had  he  not  wandered  with  the  Crows, 
fought  the  Blackfeet,  gone  down  to  St.  Louis,  and  been 
impelled  by  that  strange  impulse  of  adventure  which 
was  to  the  hunter  what  the  instinct  of  migration  is  to 
bird  and  fish  and  buffalo  and  all  wild  things — to  go 
yet  again  to  the  wilderness  ?  Such  was  the  passion  for 
the  wilds  that  ruled  the  life  of  all  free  trappers. 

The  free  trappers  formed  a  class  by  themselves. 

Other  trappers  either  hunted  on  a  salary  of  $200, 
$300,  $400  a  year,  or  on  shares,  like  fishermen  of  the 
Grand  Banks  outfitted  by  "planters,"  or  like  western 
prospectors  outfitted  by  companies  that  supply  pro- 
visions, boats,  and  horses,  expecting  in  return  the  major 
share  of  profits.  The  free  trappers  fitted  themselves 
out,  owed  allegiance  to  no  man,  hunted  where  and  how 
they  chose,  and  refused  to  carry  their  furs  to  any  fort 
but  the  one  that  paid  the  highest  prices.  For  the 
mangeurs  de  lard,  as  they  called  the  fur  company 
raftsmen,  they  had  a  supreme  contempt.  For  the  meth- 
ods of  the  fur  companies,  putting  rivals  to  sleep  with 
laudanum  or  bullet  and  ever  stirring  the  savages  up  to 
warfare,  the  free  trappers  had  a  rough  and  emphati- 
cally expressed  loathing. 

The  crime  of  corrupting  natives  can  never  be  laid 
to  the  free  trapper.  He  carried  neither  poison,  nor 
what  was  worse  than  poison  to  the  Indian — whisky — 
among  the  native  tribes.  The  free  trapper  lived  on 
good  terms  with  the  Indian,  because  his  safety  de- 
pended on  the  Indian.  Eenegades  like  Bird,  the  de- 
serter from  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company,  or  Eose,  who 
abandoned  the  Astorians,  or  Beckwourth  of  apocryphal 


168      THE  STORY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

fame,  might  cast  off  civilization  and  become  Indian 
chiefs ;  but,  after  all,  these  men  were  not  guilty  of  half 
so  hideous  crimes  as  the  great  fur  companies  of  boasted 
respectability.  Wyeth  of  Boston,  and  Captain  Bonne- 
ville  of  the  army,  whose  underlings  caused  such  mur- 
derous slaughter  among  the  Boot  Diggers,  were  not 
free  trappers  in  th&  true  sense  of  the  term.  Wyeth 
was  an  enthusiast  who  caught  the  fever  of  the  wilds; 
and  Captain  Bonneville,  a  gay  adventurer,  whose  men 
shot  down  more  Indians  in  one  trip  than  all  the  free 
trappers  of  America  shot  in  a  century.  As  for  the  des- 
perado Harvey,  whom  Larpenteur  reports  shooting  In- 
dians like  dogs,  his  crimes  were  committed  under  the 
walls  of  the  American  Fur  Company's  fort.  MacLel- 
lan  and  Crooks  and  John  Day — before  they  joined  the 
Astorians — and  Boone  and  Carson  and  Colter,  are 
names  that  stand  for  the  true  type  of  free  trapper. 

The  free  trapper  went  among  the  Indians  with  no 
defence  but  good  behaviour  and  the  keenness  of  his  wit. 
Whatever  crimes  the  free  trapper  might  be  guilty  of 
towards  white  men,  he  was  guilty  of  few  towards  the 
Indians.  Consequently,  free  trappers  were  all  through 
Minnesota  and  the  region  westward  of  the  Mississippi 
forty  years  before  the  fur  companies  dared  to  venture 
among  the  Sioux.  Fisher  and  Fraser  and  Woods  knew 
the  Upper  Missouri  before  1806 ;  and  Brugiere  had  been 
on  the  Columbia  many  years  before  the  Astorians  came 
in  1811. 

One  crime  the  free  trappers  may  be  charged  with — 
a  reckless  waste  of  precious  furs.  The  great  companies 
always  encouraged  the  Indians  not  to  hunt  more  game 
than  they  needed  for  the  season's  support.  And  no  In- 
dian hunter,  uncorrupted  by  white  men,  would  molest 


JOHN  COLTER— FREE  TRAPPER  169 

game  while  the  mothers  were  with  their  young.  Famine 
had  taught  them  the  punishment  that  follows  reckless 
hunting.  But  the  free  trappers  were  here  to-day  and 
away  to-morrow,  like  a  Chinaman,  to  take  all  they  could 
get  regardless  of  results ;  and  the  results  were  the  rapid 
extinction  of  fur-bearing  game. 

Always  there  were  more  free  trappers  in  the  United 
States  than  in  Canada.  Before  the  union  of  Hudson's 
Bay  and  Nor'  Wester  in  Canada,  all  classes  of  trap- 
pers were  absorbed  by  one  of  the  two  great  companies. 
After  the  union,  when  the  monopoly  enjoyed  by  the 
Hudson's  Bay  did  not  permit  it  literally  to  drive  a  free 
trapper  out,  it  could  always  "  freeze  "  him  out  by  with- 
holding supplies  in  its  great  white  northern  wilder- 
nesses, or  by  refusing  to  give  him  transport.  When  the 
monopoly  passed  away  in  1871,  free  trappers  pressed 
north  from  the  Missouri,  where  their  methods  had  ex- 
terminated game,  and  carried  on  the  same  ruthless 
warfare  on  the  Saskatchewan.  North  of  the  Saskatche- 
wan, where  very  remoteness  barred  strangers  out,  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Company  still  held  undisputed  sway; 
and  Lord  Strathcona,  the  governor  of  the  company,  was 
able  to  say  only  two  years  ago,  "  the  fur  trade  is  quite 
as  large  as  ever  it  was." 

Among  free  hunters,  Canada  had  only  one  com- 
manding figure — John  Johnston  of  the  Soo,  who  set- 
tled at  La  Pointe  on  Lake  Superior  in  1792,  formed 
league  with  Wabogish,  "  the  White  Fisher,"  and  became 
the  most  famous  trader  of  the  Lakes.  His  life,  too,  was 
almost  as  eventful  as  Colter's.  A  member  of  the  Irish 
nobility,  some  secret  which  he  never  chose  to  reveal 
drove  him  to  the  wilds.  Wabogish,  the  "  White  Fisher," 
had  a  daughter  who  refused  the  wooings  of  all  her 


170  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

tribe's  warriors.  In  vain  Johnston  sued  for  her  hand. 
Old  Wabogish  bade  the  white  man  go  sell  his  Irish  es- 
tates and  prove  his  devotion  by  buying  as  vast  estates 
in  America.  Johnston  took  the  old  chief  at  his  word, 
and  married  the  haughty  princess  of  the  Lake.  When 
the  War  of  1812  set  all  the  tribes  by  the  ears,  Johnston 
and  his  wife  had  as  thrilling  adventures  as  ever  Colter 
knew  among  the  Blackfeet. 

Many  a  free  trapper,  and  partner  of  the  fur  com- 
panies as  well,  secured  his  own  safety  by  marrying  the 
daughter  of  a  chief,  as  Johnston  had.  'These  were  not 
the  lightly-come,  lightly-go  affairs  of  the  vagrant  ad- 
venturer. If  the  husband  had  not  cast  off  civilization 
like  a  garment,  the  wife  had  to  put  it  on  like  a  garment ; 
and  not  an  ill-fitting  garment  either,  when  one  consid- 
ers that  the  convents  of  the  quiet  nuns  dotted  the  wil- 
derness like  oases  in  a  desert  almost  contemporaneous 
with  the  fur  trade.  If  the  trapper  had  not  sunk  to  the 
level  of  the  savages,  the  little  daughter  of  the  chief  was 
educated  by  the  nuns  for  her  new  position.  I  recall 
several  cases  where  the  child  was  sent  across  the  At- 
lantic to  an  English  governess  so  that  the  equality 
would  be  literal  and  not  a  sentimental  fiction.  And  yet, 
on  no  subject  has  the  western  fur  trader  received  more 
persistent  and  unjust  condemnation.  The  heroism  that 
culminated  in  the  union  of  Pocahontas  with  a  noted 
Virginian  won  applause,  and  almost  similar  circum- 
stances dictated  the  union  of  fur  traders  with  the 
daughters  of  Indian  chiefs;  but  because  the  fur  trader 
has  not  posed  as  a  sentimentalist,  he  has  become  more 
or  less  of  a  target  for  the  index  finger  of  the  Pharisee.* 

*  Would  not  such  critics  think  twice  before  passing  judgment 
if  they  recalled  that  General  Parker  was  a  full-blood  Indian ;  that 


JOHN  COLTER— FREE  TRAPPER  171 

North  of  the  boundary  the  free  trapper  had  small 
chance  against  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company.  As  long 
as  the  slow-going  Mackinaw  Company,  itself  chiefly  re- 
cruited from  free  trappers,  ruled  at  the  junction  of  the 
Lakes,  the  free  trappers  held  the  hunting-grounds  of 
the  Mississippi;  but  after  the  Mackinaw  was  absorbed 
by  the  aggressive  American  Fur  Company,  the  free 
hunters  were  pushed  westward.  On  the  Lower  Mis- 
souri competition  raged  from  1810,  so  that  circum- 
stances drove  the  free  trapper  westward  to  the  moun- 
tains, where  he  is  hunting  in  the  twentieth  century  as 
his  prototype  hunted  two  hundred  years  ago. 

In  Canada — of  course  after  1870 — he  entered  the 
mountains  chiefly  by  three  passes:  (1)  Yellow  Head 
Pass  southward  of  the  Athabasca;  (2)  the  narrow  gap 
where  the  Bow  emerges  to  the  plains — that  is,  the  river 
where  the  Indians  found  the  best  wood  for  the  making 
of  bows;  (3)  north  of  the  boundary,  through  that  nar- 
row defile  overtowered  by  the  lonely  flat-crowned  peak 
called  Crow's  Nest  Mountain — that  is,  where  the  fugi- 
tive Crows  took  refuge  from  the  pursuing  Blackfeet. 

if  Johnston  had  not  married  Wabogish's  daughter  and  if  John- 
ston's daughter  had  not  preferred  to  marry  Schoolcraft  instead 
of  going  to  her  relatives  of  the  Irish  nobility,  Longfellow  would 
have  written  no  Hiawatha?  Would  they  not  hesitate  before 
slurring  men  like  Premier  Norquay  of  Manitoba  and  the  famous 
MacKenzies,  those  princes  of  fur  trade  from  St.  Louis  to  the 
Arctic,  and  David  Thompson,  the  great  explorer  ?  Do  they  for- 
get that  Lord  Strathcona,  one  of  the  foremost  peers  of  Britain, 
is  related  to  the  proudest  race  of  plain-rangers  that  ever  scoured 
the  West,  the  Bois-Brules  f  The  writer  knows  the  West  from 
only  fifteen  years  of  life  and  travel  there ;  yet  with  that  imper- 
fect knowledge  cannot  recall  a  single  fur  post  without  some  tra- 
dition of  an  unfamed  Pocahontas. 


172  THE  STORY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

In  the  United  States,  the  free  hunters  also  ap- 
proached the  mountains  by  three  main  routes:  (1)  Up 
the  Platte;  (2)  westward  from  the  Missouri  across  the 
plains;  (3)  by  the  Three  Forks  of  the  Missouri.  For  in- 
stance, it  was  coming  down  the  Platte  that  poor  Scott's 
canoe  was  overturned,  his  powder  lost,  and  his  rifles 
rendered  useless.  Game  had  retreated  to  the  moun- 
tains with  spring's  advance.  Berries  were  not  ripe  by 
the  time  trappers  were  descending  with  their  winter's 
hunt.  Scott  and  his  famishing  men  could  not  find  edi- 
ble roots.  Each  day  Scott  weakened.  There  was  no 
food.  Finally,  Scott  had  strength  to  go  no  farther. 
His  men  had  found  tracks  of  some  other  hunting  party 
far  to  the  fore.  They  thought  that,  in  any  case,  he 
could  not  live.  What  ought  they  to  do?  Hang  back 
and  starve  with  him,  or  hasten  forward  while  they  had 
strength,  to  the  party  whose  track  they  had  espied?  On 
pretence  of  seeking  roots,  they  deserted  the  helpless 
man.  Perhaps  they  did  not  come  up  with  the  advance 
party  till  they  were  sure  that  Scott  must  have  died;  for 
they  did  not  go  back  to  his  aid.  The  next  spring  when 
these  same  hunters  went  up  the  Platte,  they  found  the 
skeleton  of  poor  Scott  sixty  miles  from  the  place  where 
they  had  left  him.  The  terror  that  spurred  the  emaci- 
ated man  to  drag  himself  all  this  weary  distance  can 
barely  be  conceived;  but  such  were  the  fearful  odds 
taken  by  every  free  trapper  who  went  up  the  Platte, 
across  the  parched  plains,  or  to  the  head  waters  of  the 
Missouri. 

The  time  for  the  free  trappers  to  go  out  was,  in 
Indian  language,  "  when  the  leaves  began  to  fall."  If 
a  mighty  hunter  like  Colter,  the  trapper  was  to  the 
savage  "  big  Indian  me  " ;  if  only  an  ordinary  vagrant 


JOHN  COLTER-FREE  TRAPPER  173 

of  woods  and  streams,  the  white  man  was  "big  knife 
you,"  in  distinction  to  the  red  man  carrying  only  primi- 
tive weapons.  Very  often  the  free  trapper  slipped  away 
from  the  fur  post  secretly,  or  at  night ;  for  there  were 
questions  of  licenses  which  he  disregarded,  knowing 
well  that  the  buyer  of  his  furs  would  not  inform  for 
fear  of  losing  the  pelts.  Also  and  more  important  in 
counseling  caution,  the  powerful  fur  companies  had 
spies  on  the  watch  to  dog  the  free  trapper  to  his  hunt- 
ing-grounds; and  rival  hunters  would  not  hesitate  to 
bribe  the  natives  with  a  keg  of  rum  for  all  the  peltries 
which  the  free  trapper  had  already  bought  by  advancing 
provisions  to  Indian  hunters.  Indeed,  rival  hunters 
have  not  hesitated  to  bribe  the  savages  to  pillage  and 
murder  the  free  trapper;  for  there  was  no  law  in  the 
fur  trading  country,  and  no  one  to  ask  what  became  of 
the  free  hunter  who  went  alone  into  the  wilderness  and 
never  returned. 

Going  out  alone,  or  with  only  one  partner,  the  free 
hunter  encumbered  himself  with  few  provisions.  Two 
dollars  worth  of  tobacco  would  buy  a  thousand  pounds 
of  "  jerked  "  buffalo  meat,  and  a  few  gaudy  trinkets  for 
a  squaw  all  the  pemmican  white  men  could  use. 

Going  by  the  river  routes,  four  days  out  from  St. 
Louis  brought  the  trapper  into  regions  of  danger.  In- 
dian scouts  hung  on  the  watch  among  the  sedge  of  the 
river  bank.  One  thin  line  of  upcurling  smoke,  or  a 
piece  of  string — 'babiche  (leather  cord,  called  by  the  In- 
dians assapapish) — -fluttering  from  a  shrub,  or  little 
sticks  casually  dropped  on  the  river  bank  pointing  one 
way,  all  were  signs  that  told  of  marauding  bands. 
Some  birch  tree  was  notched  with  an  Indian  cipher — 
a  hunter  had  passed  that  way  and  claimed  the  bark  for 


174  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

his  next  year's  canoe.  Or  the  mark  might  be  on  a 
cottonwood — some  man  wanted  this  tree  for  a  dugout. 
Perhaps  a  stake  stood  with  a  mark  at  the  entrance  to 
a  beaver-marsh — some  hunter  had  found  this  ground 
first  and  warned  all  other  trappers  off  by  the  code  of 
wilderness  honour.  Notched  tree-trunks  told  of  some 
runner  gone  across  country,  blazing  a  trail  by  which 
he  could  return.  Had  a  piece  of  fungus  been  torn  from 
a  hemlock  log?  There  were  Indians  near,  and  the 
squaw  had  taken  the  thing  to  whiten  leather.  If  a  sud- 
den puff  of  black  smoke  spread  out  in  a  cone  above  some 
distant  tree,  it  was  an  ominous  sign  to  the  trapper. 
The  Indians  had  set  fire  to  the  inside  of  a  punky  trunk 
and  the  shooting  flames  were  a  rallying  call. 

In  the  most  perilous  regions  the  trapper  travelled 
only  after  nightfall  with  muffled  paddles — that  is, 
muffled  where  the  handle  might  strike  the  gunwale. 
Camp-fires  warned  him  which  side  of  the  river  to  avoid ; 
and  often  a  trapper  slipping  past  under  the  shadow 
of  one  bank  saw  hobgoblin  figures  dancing  round 
the  flames  of  the  other  bank — Indians  celebrating  their 
scalp  dance.  In  these  places  the  white  hunter  ate  cold 
meals  to  avoid  lighting  a  fire;  or  if  he  lighted  a  fire, 
after  cooking  his  meal  he  withdrew  at  once  and  slept 
at  a  distance  from  the  light  that  might  betray  him. 

The  greatest  risk  of  travelling  after  dark  during  the 
spring  floods  arose  from  what  the  voyageurs  called  em- 
larras — trees  torn  from  the  banks  sticking  in  the  soft 
bottom  like  derelicts  with  branches  to  entangle  the 
trapper's  craft;  but  the  embarras  often  befriended  the 
solitary  white  man.  Usually  he  slept  on  shore  rolled 
in  a  buffalo-robe;  but  if  Indian  signs  were  fresh,  he 
moored  his  canoe  in  mid-current  and  slept  under  hiding 


JOHN  COLTER— FREE  TRAPPER  175 

of  the  drift-wood.  Friendly  Indians  did  not  conceal 
themselves,  but  came  to  the  river  bank  waving  a  buf- 
falo-robe and  spreading  it  out  to  signal  a  welcome  to 
the  white  man;  when  the  trapper  would  go  ashore, 
whiff  pipes  with  the  chiefs  and  perhaps  spend  the  night 
listening  to  the  tales  of  exploits  which  each  notch  on 
the  calumet  typified.  Incidents  that  meant  nothing  to 
other  men  were  full  of  significance  to  the  lone  voyageur 
through  hostile  lands.  Always  the  spring  floods  drift- 
ed down  numbers  of  dead  buffalo ;  and  the  carrion  birds 
sat  on  the  trees  of  the  shore  with  their  wings  spread 
out  to  dry  in  the  sun.  The  sudden  flacker  of  a  rising 
flock  betrayed  something  prowling  in  ambush  on  the 
bank;  so  did  the  splash  of  a  snake  from  overhanging 
branches  into  the  water. 

Different  sorts  of  dangers  beset  the  free  trapper 
crossing  the  plains  to  the  mountains.  The  fur  com- 
pany brigades  always  had  escort  of  armed  guard  and 
provision  packers.  The  free  trappers  went  alone  or  in 
pairs,  picketing  horses  to  the  saddle  overlaid  with  a 
buffalo-robe  for  a  pillow,  cooking  meals  on  chip  fires, 
using  a  slow-burning  wormwood  bark  for  matches,  and 
trusting  their  horses  or  dog  to  give  the  alarm  if  the 
bands  of  coyotes  hovering  through  the  night  dusk  ap- 
proached too  near.  On  the  high  rolling  plains,  hostiles 
could  be  descried  at  a  distance,  coming  over  the  hori- 
zon head  and  top  first  like  the  peak  of  a  sail,  or  emer- 
ging from  the  "  coolies  " — dried  sloughs — like  wolves 
from  the  earth.  Enemies  could  be  seen  soon  enough; 
but  where  could  the  trapper  hide  on  bare  prairie  ?  He 
didn't  attempt  to  hide.  He  simply  set  fire  to  the 
prairie  and  took  refuge  on  the  lee  side.  That  device 
failing,  he  was  at  his  enemies'  mercy. 


176      THE  STORY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

On  the  plains,  the  greatest  danger  was  from  lack 
of  water.  At  one  season  the  trapper  might  know  where 
to  find  good  camping  streams.  The  next  year  when  he 
came  to  those  streams  they  were  dry. 

"After  leaving  the  buffalo  meadows  a  dreadful  scarcity  of 
water  ensued,"  wrote  Charles  MacKenzie,  of  the  famous  Mac- 
Kenzie  clan.  He  was  journeying  north  from  the  Missouri.  *  *  We 
had  to  alter  our  course  and  steer  to  a  distant  lake.  When  we 
got  there  we  found  the  lake  dry.  However,  we  dug  a  pit  which 
produced  a  kind  of  stinking  liquid  which  we  all  drank.  It  was 
salt  and  bitter,  caused  an  inflammation  of  the  mouth,  left  a 
disagreeable  roughness  of  the  throat,  and  seemed  to  increase 
our  thirst.  .  .  .  We  passed  the  night  under  great  uneasiness. 
Next  day  we  continued  our  journey,  but  not  a  drop  of  water 
was  to  be  found,  .  .  .  and  our  distress  became  insupportable. 
.  .  .  All  at  once  our  horses  became  so  unruly  that  we  could  not 
manage  them.  We  observed  that  they  showed  an  inclination 
towards  a  hill  which  was  close  by.  It  struck  me  that  they 
might  have  scented  water.  ...  I  ascended  to  the  top,  where, 
to  my  great  joy,  I  discovered  a  small  pool.  .  .  .  My  horse 
plunged  in  before  I  could  prevent  him,  .  .  .  and  all  the  horses 
drank  to  excess." 

"  The  plains  across  " — which  was  a  western  expres- 
sion meaning  the  end  of  that  part  of  the  trip — there 
rose  on  the  west  rolling  foothills  and  dark  peaked  pro- 
files against  the  sky  scarcely  to  he  distinguished  from 
gray  cloud  banks.  These  were  the  mountains ;  and  the 
real  hazards  of  free  trapping  began.  No  use  to  follow 
the  easiest  passes  to  the  most  frequented  valleys.  The 
fur  company  brigades  marched  through  these,  sweep- 
ing up  game  like  a  forest  fire;  so  the  free  trappers 
sought  out  the  hidden,  inaccessible  valleys,  going  where 
neither  pack  horse  nor  canot  a  bee  d'esturgeon  could 
follow.  How  did  they  do  it?  Very  much  the  way 


JOHN  COLTER— FREE  TRAPPER  177 

Simon  Eraser's  hunters  crawled  down  the  river-course 
named  after  him.  "  Our  shoes/'  said  one  trapper,  "  did 
not  last  a  single  day." 

"  We  had  to  plunge  our  daggers  into  the  ground,  .  .  .  other- 
wise we  would  slide  into  the  river,"  wrote  Fraser.  uWe  cut 
steps  into  the  declivity,  fastened  a  line  to  the  front  of  the  canoe, 
with  which  some  of  the  men  ascended  in  order  to  haul  it  up. 
.  .  .  Our  lives  hung,  as  it  were,  upon  a  thread,  as  the  failure 
of  the  line  or  the  false  step  of  the  man  might  have  hurled  us  into 
eternity.  ...  We  had  to  pass  where  no  human  being  should 
venture.  .  .  .  Steps  were  formed  like  a  ladder  on  the  shrouds  of 
a  ship,  by  poles  hanging  to  one  another  and  crossed  at  certain 
distances  with  twigs,  the  whole  suspended  from  the  top  to  the 
foot  of  immense  precipices,  and  fastened  at  both  extremities  to 
stones  and  trees." 

He  speaks  of  the  worst  places  being  where  these 
frail  swaying  ladders  led  up  to  the  overhanging  ledge 
of  a  shelving  precipice. 

Such  were  the  very  real  adventures  of  the  trapper's 
life,  a  life  whose  fascinations  lured  John  Colter  from 
civilization  to  the  wilds  again  and  again  till  he  came 
back  once  too  often  and  found  himself  stripped,  help- 
less, captive,  in  the  hands  of  the  Blackfeet. 

It  would  be  poor  sport  torturing  a  prisoner  who 
showed  no  more  fear  than  this  impassive  white  man 
coolly  listening  and  waiting  for  them  to  compass  his 
death.  So  the  chief  dismissed  the  suggestion  to  shoot 
at  their  captive  as  a  target.  Suddenly  the  Blackfoot 
leader  turned  to  Colter.  "  Could  the  white  man  run 
fast?"  he  asked.  In  a  flash  Colter  guessed  what  was 
to  be  his  fate.  He,  the  hunter,  was  to  be  hunted.  No, 
he  cunningly  signalled,  he  was  only  a  poor  runner. 

Bidding  his  warriors  stand  still,  the  chief  roughly 
13 


178  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TKAPPER 

led  Colter  out  three  hundred  yards.  Then  he  set  his 
captive  free,  and  the  exultant  shriek  of  the  running 
warriors  told  what  manner  of  sport  this  was  to  he.  It 
was  a  race  for  life. 

The  white  man  shot  out  with  all  the  power  of 
muscles  hard  as  iron-wood  and  tense  as  a  bent  how. 
Fear  winged  the  man  running  for  his  life  to  outrace  the 
winged  arrows  coming  from  the  shouting  warriors  three 
hundred  yards  behind.  Before  him  stretched  a  plain 
six  miles  wide,  the  distance  he  had  so  thoughtlessly 
paddled  between  the  rampart  walls  of  the  canon  but 
a  few  hours  ago.  At  the  Jefferson  was  a  thick  forest 
growth  where  a  fugitive  might  escape.  Somewhere 
along  the  Jefferson  was  his  own  hidden  cabin. 

Across  this  plain  sped  Colter,  pursued  by  a  band 
of  six  hundred  shrieking  demons.  Not  one  breath  did 
he  waste  looking  back  over  his  shoulder  till  he  was 
more  than  half-way  across  the  plain,  and  could  tell 
from  the  fading  uproar  that  he  was  outdistancing  his 
hunters.  Perhaps  it  was  the  last  look  of  despair;  but 
it  spurred  the  jaded  racer  to  redoubled  efforts.  All 
the  Indians  had  been  left  to  the  rear  but  one,  who  was 
only  a  hundred  yards  behind. 

There  was,  then,  a  racing  chance  of  escape !  Colter 
let  out  in  a  burst  of  renewed  speed  that  brought  blood 
gushing  over  his  face,  while  the  cactus  spines  cut  his 
naked  feet  like  knives.  The  river  was  in  sight.  A 
mile  more,  he  would  be  in  the  wood !  But  the  Indian 
behind  was  gaining  at  every  step.  Another  backward 
look !  The  savage  was  not  thirty  yards  away  I  He  had 
poised  his  spear  to  launch  it  in  Colter's  back,  when  the 
white  man  turned  fagged  and  beaten,  threw  up  his  arms 
and  stopped ! 


JOHN  COLTER-FREE  TRAPPER  179 

This  is  an  Indian  ruse  to  arrest  the  pursuit  of  a 
wild  beast.  By  force  of  habit  it  stopped  the  Indian  too, 
and  disconcerted  him  so  that  instead  of  launching  his 
spear,  he  fell  flat  on  his  face,  breaking  the  shaft  in  his 
hand.  With  a  leap,  Colter  had  snatched  up  the  broken 
point  and  pinned  the  savage  through  the  body  to  the 
earth. 

That  intercepted  the  foremost  of  the  other  warriors, 
who  stopped  to  rescue  their  brave  and  gave  Colter  time 
to  reach  the  river. 

In  he  plunged,  fainting  and  dazed,  swimming  for  an 
island  in  mid-current  where  driftwood  had  formed  a 
sheltered  raft.  Under  this  he  dived,  coming  up  with 
his  head  among  branches  of  trees. 

All  that  day  the  Blackfeet  searched  the  island  for 
Colter,  running  from  log  to  log  of  the  drift;  but  the 
close-grown  brushwood  hid  the  white  man.  At  night 
he  swam  down-stream  like  any  other  hunted  animal 
that  wants  to  throw  pursuers  off  the  trail,  went  ashore 
and  struck  across  country,  seven  days'  journey  for  the 
Missouri  Company's  fort  on  the  Bighorn  River. 

Naked  and  unarmed,  he  succeeded  in  reaching  the 
distant  fur  post,  having  subsisted  entirely  on  roots  and 
berries. 

Chittenden  says  that  poor  Colter's  adventure  only 
won  for  him  in  St.  Louis  the  reputation  of  a  colossal 
liar.  But  traditions  of  his  escape  were  current  among 
all  hunters  and  Indian  tribes  on  the  Missouri,  so  that 
when  Bradbury,  the  English  scientist,  went  west  with 
the  Astorians  in  1811,  he  sifted  the  matter,  accepted  it 
as  truth,  and  preserved  the  episode  for  history  in  a 


180  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

small-type  foot-note  to  his  book  published  in  London 
in  1817. 

Two  other  adventures  are  on  record  similar  to  Col- 
ter's: one  of  Oskononton's  escape  by  diving  under  a 
raft,  told  in  Ross's  Fur  Hunters;  the  other  of  a  poor 
Indian  fleeing  up  the  Ottawa  from  pursuing  Iroquois  of 
the  Five  Nations  and  diving  under  the  broken  bottom 
of  an  old  beaver-dam,  told  in  the  original  Jesuit  Rela- 
tions. 

And  yet  when  the  Astorians  went  up  the  Missouri 
a  few  years  later,  Colter  could  scarcely  resist  the  im- 
pulse to  go  a  fourth  time  to  the  wilds.  But  fascina- 
tions stronger  than  the  wooings  of  the  wilds  had  come 
to  his  life — he  had  taken  to  himself  a  bride. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE  GREATEST  FUR  COMPANY  OF  THE  WORLD 

IN  the  history  of  the  world  only  one  corporate  com- 
pany has  maintained  empire  over  an  area  as  large  as 
Europe.  Only  one  corporate  company  has  lived  up  to 
its  constitution  for  nearly  three  centuries.  Only  one 
corporate  company's  sway  has  been  so  beneficent  that 
its  profits  have  stood  in  exact  proportion  to  the  well- 
being  of  its  subjects.  Indeed,  few  armies  can  boast  a 
rank  and  file  of  men  who  never  once  retreated  in  three 
hundred  years,  whose  lives,  generation  after  genera- 
tion, were  one  long  bivouac  of  hardship,  of  danger,  of 
ambushed  death,  of  grim  purpose,  of  silent  achieve- 
ment. 

Such  was  the  company  of  "  Adventurers  of  England 
Trading  into  Hudson's  Bay,"  as  the  charter  of  1670 
designated  them.*  Such  is  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company 
to-day  still  trading  with  savages  in  the  white  wilder- 
ness of  the  north  as  it  was  when  Charles  II  granted 
a  royal  charter  for  the  fur  trade  to  his  cousin  Prince 
Rupert. 

Governors  and  chief  factors  have  changed  with  the 

*  The  spelling  of  the  name  with  an  apostrophe  in  the  charter 
seems  to  be  the  only  reason  for  the  company's  name  always  hav- 
ing the  apostrophe,  whereas  the  waters  are  now  known  simply  as 
Hudson  Bay. 

181 


182  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

changing  centuries ;  but  the  character  of  the  company's 
personnel  has  never  changed.  Prince  Rupert,  the  first 
governor,  was  succeeded  by  the  Duke  of  York  (James 
II);  and  the  royal  governor  by  a  long  line  of  distin- 
guished public  men  down  to  Lord  Strathcona,  the  pres- 
ent governor,  and  C.  C.  Chipman,  the  chief  commis- 
sioner or  executive  officer.  All  have  been  men  of  noted 
achievement,  often  in  touch  with  the  Crown,  always 
with  that  passion  for  executive  and  mastery  of  difficulty 
which  exults  most  when  the  conflict  is  keenest. 

Pioneers  face  the  unknown  when  circumstances 
push  them  into  it.  Adventurers  rush  into  the  un- 
known for  the  zest  of  conquering  it.  It  has  been  to 
the  adventuring  class  that  fur  traders  have  belonged. 

Radisson  and  Groseillers,  the  two  Frenchmen  who 
first  brought  back  word  of  the  great  wealth  in  furs 
round  the  far  northern  sea,  had  been  gentlemen  ad- 
venturers— "  rascals "  their  enemies  called  them. 
Prince  Rupert,  who  leagued  himself  with  the  French- 
men to  obtain  a  charter  for  his  fur  trade,  had  been 
an  adventurer  of  the  high  seas — "pirate"  we  would 
say — long  before  he  became  first  governor  of  the  Hud- 
son's Bay  Company.  And  the  Duke  of  Marlborough, 
the  company's  third  governor,  was  as  great  an  adven- 
turer as  he  was  a  general. 

Latterly  the  word  "  adventurer  "  has  fallen  in  such 
evil  repute,  it  may  scarcely  be  applied  to  living  actors. 
But  using  it  in  the  old-time  sense  of  militant  hero, 
what  cavalier  of  gold  braid  and  spurs  could  be  more  of 
an  adventurer  than  young  Donald  Smith  who  traded  in 
the  desolate  wastes  of  Labrador,  spending  seventeen 
years  in  the  hardest  field  of  the  fur  company,  tramping 
on  snow-shoes  half  the  width  of  a  continent,  camping 


THE  GREATEST  FUR  COMPANY  OF  THE  WORLD    183 

where  night  overtook  him  under  blanketing  of  snow- 
drifts, who  rose  step  by  step  from  trader  on  the  east 
coast  to  commissioner  in  the  west?  And  this  Donald 
Smith  became  Lord  Strathcona,  the  governor  of  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Company. 

Men  bold  in  action  and  conservative  in  traditions 
have  ruled  the  company.  The  governor  resident  in 
England  is  now  represented  by  the  chief  commissioner, 
who  in  turn  is  represented  at  each  of  the  many  inland 
forts  by  a  chief  factor  of  the  district.  Nominally,  the 
fur-trader's  northern  realm  is  governed  by  the  Parlia- 
ment of  Canada.  Virtually,  the  chief  factor  rules  as 
autocratically  to-day  as  he  did  before  the  Canadian 
Government  took  over  the  proprietary  rights  of  the  fur 
company. 

How  did  these  rulers  of  the  wilds,  these  princes  of 
the  fur  trade,  live  in  lonely  forts  and  mountain  fast- 
nesses? Visit  one  of  the  northern  forts  as  it  exists 
to-day. 

The  colder  the  climate,  the  finer  the  fur.  The  far- 
ther north  the  fort,  the  more  typical  it  is  of  the  fur- 
trader's  realm. 

For  six,  seven,  eight  months  of  the  year,  the  fur- 
trader's  world  is  a  white  wilderness  of  snow;  snow 
water-waved  by  winds  that  sweep  from  the  pole;  snow 
drifted  into  ramparts  round  the  fort  stockades  till  the 
highest  picket  sinks  beneath  the  white  flood  and  the 
corner  bastions  are  almost  submerged  and  the  entrance 
to  the  central  gate  resembles  the  cutting  of  a  railway 
tunnel;  snow  that  billows  to  the  unbroken  reaches  of 
the  circling  sky-line  like  a  white  sea.  East,  frost-mist 
hides  the  low  horizon  in  clouds  of  smoke,  for  the  sun 
which  rises  from  the  east  in  other  climes  rises  from 


184:  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

the  south-east  here ;  and  until  the  spring  equinox,  bring- 
ing summer  with  a  flood-tide  of  thaw,  gray  darkness 
hangs  in  the  east  like  a  fog.  South,  the  sun  moves 
across  the  snowy  levels  in  a  wheel  of  fire,  for  it  has 
scarcely  risen  full  sphered  above  the  sky-line  before  it 
sinks  again  etching  drift  and  tip  of  half-buried  brush 
in  long  lonely  fading  shadows.  The  west  shimmers 
in  warm  purplish  grays,  for  the  moist  Chinook  winds 
come  over  the  mountains  melting  the  snow  by  magic. 
North,  is  the  cold  steel  of  ice  by  day;  and  at  night 
Northern  Lights  darting  through  the  polar  dark  like 
burnished  spears. 

Christmas  day  is  welcomed  at  the  northern  fur 
posts  by  a  firing  of  cannon  from  the  snow-muffled  bas- 
tions. Before  the  stars  have  faded,  chapel  services  be- 
gin. Frequently  on  either  Christmas  or  New  Year's 
day,  a  grand  feast  is  given  the  tawny-skinned  habitues 
of  the  fort,  who  come  shuffling  to  the  main  mess-room 
with  no  other  announcement  than  the  lifting  of  the 
latch,  and  billet  themselves  on  the  hospitality  of  a  host 
that  has  never  turned  hungry  Indians  from  its  doors. 

For  reasons  well-known  to  the  woodcraftsman,  a 
sudden  lull  falls  on  winter  hunting  in  December,  and 
all  the  trappers  within  a  week's  journey  from  the  fort, 
all  the  half-breed  guides  who  add  to  the  instinct  of 
native  craft  the  reasoning  of  the  white,  all  the  Indian 
hunters  ranging  river-course  and  mountain  have  come 
by  snow-shoes  and  dog  train  to  spend  festive  days  at  the 
fort.  A  great  jangling  of  bells  announces  the  huskies 
(dog  trains)  scampering  over  the  crusted  snow-drifts. 
A 'babel  of  barks  and  curses  follows,  for  the  huskies 
celebrate  their  arrival  by  tangling  themselves  up  in  their 
harness  and  enjoying  a  free  fight. 


THE  GEEATEST  FUR  COMPANY  OF  THE  WORLD    185 

Dogs  unharnessed,  in  troop  the  trappers  to  the  ban- 
quet-hall, flinging  packs  of  tightly  roped  peltries  down 
promiscuously,  to  be  sorted  next  day.  One  Indian  en- 
ters just  as  he  has  left  the  hunting-field,  clad  from 
head  to  heel  in  white  caribou  with  the  antlers  left  on 
the  capote  as  a  decoy.  His  squaw  has  togged  out  for 
the  occasion  in  a  comical  medley  of  brass  bracelets  and 
finger-rings,  with  a  bear's  claw  necklace  and  ermine  ruff 
which  no  city  connoisseur  could  possibly  mistake  for 
rabbit.  If  a  daughter  yet  remain  unappropriated  she 
will  display  the  gayest  attire — red  flannel  galore,  red 
shawl,  red  scarf,  with  perhaps  an  apron  of  white  fox- 
skin  and  moccasins  garnished  in  coloured  grasses.  The 
braves  outdo  even  a  vain  young  squaw.  Whole  fox, 
mink,  or  otter  skins  have  been  braided  to  the  end 
of  their  hair,  and  hang  down  in  two  plaits  to  the 
floor.  Whitest  of  buckskin  has  been  ornamented  with 
brightest  of  beads,  and  over  all  hangs  the  gaudiest  of 
blankets,  it  may  be  a  musk-ox-skin  with  the  feats  of 
the  warrior  set  forth  in  rude  drawings  on  the  smooth 
side. 

Children  and  old  people,  too,  come  to  the  feast,  for 
the  Indian's  stomach  is  the  magnet  that  draws  his  soul. 
Grotesque  little  figures  the  children  are,  with  men's 
trousers  shambling  past  their  heels,  rabbit-skin  coats 
with  the  fur  turned  in,  and  on  top  of  all  some  old  stove- 
pipe hat  or  discarded  busby  coming  half-way  down  to 
the  urchin's  neck.  The  old  people  have  more  resem- 
blance to  parchment  on  gnarled  sticks  than  to  human 
beings.  They  shiver  under  dirty  blankets  with  every 
sort  of  cast-off  rag  tied  about  their  limbs,  hobbling 
lame  from  frozen  feet  or  rheumatism,  mumbling  tooth- 
less requests  for  something  to  eat  or  something  to  wear, 


186  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

for  tobacco,  the  solace  of  Indian  woes,  or  what  is  next 
best — tea. 

Among  so  many  guests  are  many  needs.  One  half- 
breed  from  a  far  wintering  outpost,  where  perhaps  a 
white  man  and  this  guide  are  living  in  a  chinked  shack 
awaiting  a  hunting  party's  return,  arrives  at  the  fort 
with  frozen  feet.  Little  Labree's  feet  must  be  thawed 
out,  and  sometimes  little  Labree  dies  under  the  process, 
leaving  as  a  legacy  to  the  chief  factor  the  death-bed 
pledge  that  the  corpse  be  taken  to  a  distant  tribal  bury- 
ing-ground.  And  no  matter  how  inclement  the  winter, 
the  chief  factor  keeps  his  pledge,  for  the  integrity  of  a 
promise  is  the  only  law  in  the  fur-trader's  realm.  Special 
attentions,  too,  must  be  paid  those  old  retainers  who 
have  acted  as  mentors  of  the  fort  in  times  of  trouble. 

A  few  years  ago  it  would  not  have  been  safe  to 
give  this  treat  inside  the  fort  walls.  Rations  would 
have  been  served  through  loop-holes  and  the  feast  held 
outside  the  gates;  but  so  faithfully  have  the  Indians 
become  bound  to  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  there 
are  not  three  forts  in  the  fur  territory  where  Indians 
must  be  excluded. 

Of  the  feast  little  need  be  said.  Like  the  camel, 
the  Indian  lays  up  store  for  the  morrow,  judging  from 
his  capacity  for  weeks  of  morrows.  His  benefactor  no 
more  dines  with  him  than  a  plantation  master  of  the 
South  would  have  dined  with  feasting  slaves.  Else- 
where a  bell  calls  the  company  officers  to  breakfast  at 
7.30,  dinner  at  1,  supper  at  7.  Officers  dine  first,  white 
hunters  and  trappers  second,  that  difference  between 
master  and  servant  being  maintained  which  is  part  of 
the  company's  almost  military  discipline.  In  the  large 
forts  are  libraries,  whither  resort  the  officers  for  the 


THE  GREATEST  FUR  COMPANY  OF  THE  WORLD    1ST 

long  winter  nights.  But  over  the  feast  wild  hilarity 
reigns. 

A  French-Canadian  fiddler  strikes  up  a  tuneless  jig 
that  sets  the  Indians  pounding  the  floor  in  figureless 
dances  with  moccasined  heels  till  midday  glides  into 
midnight  and  midnight  to  morning.  I  remember  hear- 
ing of  one  such  midday  feast  in  Bed  River  settlement 
that  prolonged  itself  past  four  of  the  second  morning. 
Against  the  walls  sit  old  folks  spinning  yarns  of  the 
past.  There  is  a  print  of  Sir  George  Simpson  behind 
one  raconteur's  head.  Ah!  yes,  the  oldest  guides  all 
remember  Sir  George,  though  half  a  century  has  passed 
since  his  day.  He  was  the  governor  who  travelled  with 
flags  flying  from  every  prow,  and  cannon  firing  when  he 
left  the  forts,  and  men  drawn  up  in  procession  like 
soldiers  guarding  an  emperor  when  he  entered  the  fur 
posts  with  coureurs  and  all  the  flourish  of  royal  state. 
Then  some  story-teller  recalls  how  he  has  heard  the  old 
guides  tell  of  the  imperious  governor  once  provoking 
personal  conflict  with  an  equally  imperious  steersman, 
who  first  ducked  the  governor  into  a  lake  they  were 
traversing  and  then  ducked  into  the  lake  himself  to 
rescue  the  governor. 

And  there  is  a  crucifix  high  on  the  wall  left  by 
Pere  Lacomb  the  last  time  the  famous  missionary  to 
the  red  men  of  the  Far  North  passed  this  way;  and 
every  Indian  calls  up  some  kindness  done,  some  sacri- 
fice by  Father  Lacomb.  On  the  gun-rack  are  old  mus- 
kets and  Indian  masks  and  scalp-locks,  bringing  back 
the  days  when  Russian  traders  instigated  a  massacre 
at  this  fort  and  when  white  traders  flew  at  each  other's 
throats  as  Nor'  Westers  struggled  with  Hudson's  Bay 
for  supremacy  in  the  fur  trade. 


188  THE  STORY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

"  Ah,  oui,  those  white  men,  they  were  brave  fight- 
ers, they  did  not  know  how  to  stop.  Mais,  sacre,  they 
were  fools,  those  white  men  after  all!  Instead  of 
hiding  in  ambush  to  catch  the  foe,  those  white  men 
measured  off  paces,  stood  up  face  to  face  and  fired 
blank — oui — fired  blank!  Ugh!  Of  course,  one  fool 
he  was  kill'  and  the  other  fool,  most  like,  he  was 
wound' !  Ugh,  by  Gar  I  What  Indian  would  have  so 
little  sense?"* 

Of  hunting  tales,  the  Indian  store  is  exhaustless. 
That  enormous  bear-skin  stretched  to  four  pegs  on  the 
wall  brings  up  Montagnais,  the  Noseless  One,  who  still 
lives  on  Peace  River  and  once  slew  the  largest  bear 
ever  killed  in  the  Rockies,  returning  to  this  very  fort 
with  one  hand  dragging  the  enormous  skin  and  the 
other  holding  the  place  which  his  nose  no  longer 
graced. 

"  Montagnais  ?  Ah,  bien  messieur !  Montagnais, 
he  brave  man!  Yenez  ici — bien — so — I  tole  you  'bout 
heem,"  begins  some  French-Canadian  trapper  with  a 
strong  tinge  of  Indian  blood  in  his  swarthy  skin.  "  Bi- 
gosh!  He  brave  man!  I  tole  you  'bout  dat  happen! 
Montagnais,  he  go  stumble  t'rough  snow — how  you  call 
dat? — hill,  steep — steep!  Oui,  by  Gar!  dat  vas  steep 
hill!  de  snow,  she  go  slide,  slide,  lak'  de — de  gran' 
rapeed,  see  ?  "  emphasizing  the  snow-slide  with  illus- 
trative gesture.  "Bien,  done!  Mais,  Montagnais,  he 
stick  gun-stock  in  de  snow  stop  heem  fall — so — see? 
Tonnerre!  Bigosh!  for  sure  she  go  off  wan  beeg  bang! 
Sacre!  She  make  so  much  noise  she  wake  wan  beeg 

*  To  the  Indian  mind  the  hand-to-hand  duels  between  white 
traders  were  incomprehensible  pieces  of  folly. 


THE  GREATEST  FUR  COMPANY  OF  THE  WORLD    189 

oF  bear  sleep  in  snow.  Montagnais,  he  tumble  on  hees 
back!  Mais,  messieur,  de  bear — diable!  'fore  Mon- 
tagnais wink  hees  eye  de  bear  jump  on  top  lak'  wan 
beeg  loup-garou!  Montagnais,  he  brave  man — he  not 
scare — he  say  wan  leetle  prayer,  wan  ban'  he  cover  his 
eyes  !  Odder  han' — sacre — dat  grab  hees  knife  out  hees 
belt — sz-sz-sz,  messieur.  For  sure  he  feel  her  breat' — 
diable! — for  sure  he  fin'  de  place  her  heart  beat — 
Tonnerre!  Yite!  he  stick  dat  knife  in  straight  up  hees 
wrist,  into  de  heart  dat  bear!  Dat  bes'  t'ing  do—for 
sure  de  leetle  prayer  dat  tole  him  best  t'ing  do!  De 
bear  she  roll  over — over — dead's  wan  stone — c'est  vrai ! 
she  no  mor'  jump  top  Montagnais !  Bien,  ma  f  rien' ! 
Montagnais,  he  roll  over  too — leetle  bit  scare!  Mais, 
hees  nose!  Ah!  bigosh!  de  bear  she  got  dat;  dat  all 
nose  he  ever  haf  no  mor' !  C'est  vrai  messieur,  bien !  " 

And  with  a  finishing  flourish  the  story-teller  takes 
to  himself  all  the  credit  of  Montagnais's  heroism. 

But  in  all  the  feasting,  trade  has  not  been  forgot- 
ten; and  as  soon  as  the  Indians  recover  from  post- 
prandial torpor  bartering  begins.  In  one  of  the  ware- 
houses stands  a  trader.  An  Indian  approaches  with  a 
pack  of  peltries  weighing  from  eighty  to  a  hundred 
pounds.  Throwing  it  down,  he  spreads  out  the  contents. 
Of  otter  and  mink  and  pekan  there  will  be  plenty,  for 
these  fish-eaters  are  most  easily  taken  before  midwinter 
frost  has  frozen  the  streams  solid.  In  recent  years 
there  have  been  few  beaver-skins,  a  closed  season  of 
several  years  giving  the  little  rodents  a  chance  to  mul- 
tiply. By  treaty  the  Indian  may  hunt  all  creatures 
of  the  chase  as  long  as  "the  sun  rises  and  the  rivers 
flow " ;  but  the  fur-trader  can  enforce  a  closed  season 
by  refusing  to  barter  for  the  pelts.  Of  musk-rat-skins, 


190  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TKAPPER 

hundreds  of  thousands  are  carried  to  the  forts  every 
season.  The  little  haycock  houses  of  musk-rats  offer 
the  trapper  easy  prey  when  frost  freezes  the  sloughs, 
shutting  off  retreat  below,  and  heavy  snow-fall  has  not 
yet  hidden  the  little  creatures'  winter  home. 

The  trading  is  done  in  several  ways.  Among  the 
Eskimo,  whose  arithmetical  powers  seldom  exceed  a 
few  units,  the  trader  holds  up  his  hand  with  one,  two, 
three  fingers  raised,  signifying  that  he  offers  for  the 
skin  before  him  equivalents  in  value  to  one,  two,  three 
prime  beaver.  If  satisfied,  the  Indian  passes  over  the 
furs  and  the  trader  gives  flannel,  beads,  powder,  knives, 
tea,  or  tobacco  to  the  value  of  the  beaver-skins  indicated 
by  the  raised  fingers.  If  the  Indian  demands  more, 
hunter  and  trader  wrangle  in  pantomime  till  com- 
promise is  effected. 

But  always  beaver-skin  is  the  unit  of  coin.  Beaver 
are  the  Indian's  dollars  and  cents,  his  shillings  and 
pence,  his  tokens  of  currency. 

South  of  the  Arctics,  where  native  intelligence  is 
of  higher  grade,  the  beaver  values  are  represented  by 
goose-quills,  small  sticks,  bits  of  shell,  or,  most  com- 
mon of  all,  disks  of  lead,  tea-chests  melted  down, 
stamped  on  one  side  with  the  company  arms,  on  the 
other  with  the  figures  1,  2,  £,  J,  representing  so  much 
value  in  beaver. 

First  of  all,  then,  furs  in  the  pack  must  be  sorted, 
silver  fox  worth  five  hundred  dollars  separated  from 
cross  fox  and  blue  and  white  worth  from  ten  dollars 
down,  according  to  quality,  and  from  common  red  fox 
worth  less.  Twenty  years  ago  it  was  no  unusual  thing 
for  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  to  send  to  England  year- 
ly 10,000  cross  fox-skins,  7,000  blue,  100,000  red,  half 


THE  GREATEST  FUR  COMPANY  OF  THE  WORLD    191 

a  dozen  silver.  Few  wolf-skins  are  in  the  trapper's 
pack  unless  particularly  fine  specimens  of  brown  arctic 
and  white  arctic,  bought  as  a  curiosity  and  not  for 
value  as  skins.  Against  the  wolf,  the  .trapper  wages 
war  as  against  a  pest  that  destroys  other  game,  and  not 
for  its  skin.  Next  to  musk-rat  the  most  plentiful  fur 
taken  by  the  Indian,  though  highly  esteemed  by  the 
trader,  will  be  that  of  the  rabbit  or  varying  hare.  Buf- 
falo was  once  the  staple  of  the  hunter.  What  the  buf- 
falo was  the  white  rabbit  is  to-day.  From  it  the  In- 
dian gets  clothing,  tepee  covers,  blankets,  thongs,  food. 
From  it  the  white  man  who  is  a  manufacturer  of  furs 
gets  gray  fox  and  chinchilla  and  seal  in  imitation.  Ex- 
cept one  year  in  seven,  when  a  rabbit  plague  spares  the 
land  by  cutting  down  their  prolific  numbers,  the  vary- 
ing hare  is  plentiful  enough  to  sustain  the  Indian. 

Having  received  so  many  bits  of  lead  for  his  furs, 
the  Indian  goes  to  the  store  counter  where  begins  inter- 
minable dickering.  Montagnais's  squaw  has  only  fifty 
"  beaver  "  coin,  and  her  desires  are  a  hundredfold  what 
those  will  buy.  Besides,  the  copper-skinned  lady  enjoys 
beating  down  prices  and  driving  a  bargain  so  well  that 
she  would  think  the  clerk  a  cheat  if  he  asked  a 
fixed  price  from  the  first  She  expects  him  to  have  a 
sliding  scale  of  prices  for  his  goods  as  she  has  for  her 
furs.  At  the  termination  of  each  bargain,  so  many 
coins  pass  across  the  counter.  Frequently  an  Indian 
presents  himself  at  the  counter  without  beaver  enough 
to  buy  necessaries.  What  then?  I  doubt  if  in  all  the 
years  of  Hudson's  Bay  Company  rule  one  needy  In- 
dian has  ever  been  turned  away.  The  trader  advances 
what  the  Indian  needs  and  chalks  up  so  many  "  beaver  " 
against  the  trapper's  next  hunt. 


192  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

Long  ago,  when  rival  traders  strove  for  the  furs, 
whisky  played  a  disgracefully  prominent  part  in  all 
bartering,  the  drunk  Indian  being  an  easier  victim  than 
the  sober,  and  the  Indian  mad  with  thirst  for  liquor 
the  most  easily  cajoled  of  all.  But  to-day  when  there 
is  no  competition,  whisky  plays  no  part  whatever. 
Whisky  is  in  the  fort,  so  is  pain  killer,  for  which  the 
Indian  has  as  keen  an.  appetite,  both  for  the  exigencies 
of  hazardous  life  in  an  unsparing  climate  beyond  med- 
ical aid;  but  the  first  thing  Hudson's  Bay  traders  did 
in  1885,  when  rebel  Indians  surrounded  the  Saskatche- 
wan forts,  was  to  split  the  casks  and  spill  all  alcohol. 
The  second  thing  was  to  bury  ammunition — showing 
which  influence  they  considered  the  more  dangerous. 

Ermine  is  at  its  best  when  the  cold  is  most  intense, 
the  tawny  weasel  coat  turning  from  fawn  to  yellow, 
from  yellow  to  cream  and  snow-white,  according  to  the 
latitude  north  and  the  season.  Unless  it  is  the  pelt  of 
the  baby  ermine,  soft  as  swan's  down,  tail-tip  jet  as 
onyx,  the  best  ermine  is  not  likely  to  be  in  a  pack 
brought  to  the  fort  as  early  as  Christmas. 

Fox,  lynx,  mink,  marten,  otter,  and  bear,  the  trapper 
can  take  with  steel-traps  of  a  size  varying  with  the 
game,  or  even  with  the  clumsily  constructed  deadfall, 
the  log  suspended  above  the  bait  being  heavy  or  light, 
according  to  the  hunter's  expectation  of  large  or  small 
intruder;  but  the  ermine  with  fur  as  easily  damaged 
as  finest  gauze  must  be  handled  differently. 

Going  the  rounds  of  his  traps,  the  hunter  has  noted 
curious  tiny  tracks  like  the  dots  and  dashes  of  a  tele- 
graphic code.  Here  are  little  prints  slurring  into  one 
another  in  a  dash ;  there,  a  dead  stop,  where  the  quick- 
eared  stoat  has  paused  with  beady  eyes  alert  for  snow- 


THE  GREATEST  FUR  COMPANY  OP  THE  WORLD    193 

bird  or  rabbit.  Here,  again,  a  clear  blank  on  the  snow 
where  the  crafty  little  forager  has  dived  below  the  light 
surface  and  wriggled  forward  like  a  snake  to  dart  up 
with  a  plunge  of  fangs  into  the  heart-blood  of  the  un- 
wary snow-bunting.  From  the  length  of  the  leaps,  the 
trapper  judges  the  age  of  the  ermine;  fourteen  inches 
from  nose  to  tail-tip  means  a  full-grown  ermine  with 
hair  too  coarse  to  be  damaged  by  a  snare.  The  man 
suspends  the  noose  of  a  looped  twine  across  the  run- 
way from  a  twig  bent  down  so  that  the  weight  of  the 
ermine  on  the  string  sends  the  twig  springing  back 
with  a  jerk  that  lifts  the  ermine  off  the  ground,  stran- 
gling it  instantly.  Perhaps  on  one  side  of  the  twine 
he  has  left  bait — smeared  grease,  or  a  bit  of  meat. 

If  the  tracks  are  like  the  prints  of  a  baby's  fingers, 
close  and  small,  the  trapper  hopes  to  capture  a  pelt  fit 
for  a  throne  cloak,  the  skin  for  which  the  Louis  of 
France  used  to  pay,  in  modern  money,  from  a  hundred 
dollars  to  a  hundred  and  fifty  dollars.  The  full-grown 
ermines  will  be  worth  only  some  few  "  beaver  "  at  the 
fort.  Perfect  fur  would  be  marred  by  the  twine  snare, 
so  the  trapper  devises  as  cunning  a  death  for  the  ermine 
as  the  ermine  devises  when  it  darts  up  through  the  snow 
with  its  spear-teeth  clutched  in  the  throat  of  a  poor 
rabbit.  Smearing  his  hunting-knife  with  grease,  he 
lays  it  across  the  track.  The  little  ermine  comes  trot- 
ting in  dots  and  dashes  and  gallops  and  dives  to  the 
knife.  It  smells  the  grease,  and  all  the  curiosity  which 
has  been  teaching  it  to  forage  for  food  since  it  was 
born  urges  it  to  put  out  its  tongue  and  taste.  That 
greasy  smell  of  meat  it  knows;  but  that  frost-silvered 
bit  of  steel  is  something  new.  The  knife  is  frosted  like 
ice.  Ice  the  ermine  has  licked,  so  he  licks  the  knife. 
14 


194 


THE  STOKY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 


But  alas  for  the  resemblance  between  ice  and  steel! 
Ice  turns  to  water  under  the  warm  tongue;  steel  turns 
to  fire  that  blisters  and  holds  the  foolish  little  stoat  by 
his  inquisitive  tongue  a  hopeless  prisoner  till  the  trapper 
comes.  And  lest  marauding  wolverine  or  lynx  should 
come  first  and  gobble  up  priceless  ermine,  the  trapper 
comes  soon.  And  that  is  the  end  for  the  ermine. 

Before  settlers  invaded  the  valley  of  the  Saskatche- 
wan the  furs  taken  at  a  leading  fort  would  amount  to : 


Bear  of  all  varieties . . .  400 

Ermine,  medium 200 

Blue  fox 4 

Redfox 91 

Silver  fox 3 

Marten 2,000 

Musk-rat 200,000 

Mink 8,000 

Otter...  500 


Skunk 6 

Wolf 100 

Beaver 5,000 

Pekan  (fisher) 50 

Cross  fox 30 

White  fox 400 

Lynx 400 

Wolverine..  200 


The  value  of  these  furs  in  "  beaver  "  currency  varied 
with  the  fashions  of  the  civilized  world,  with  the  scarci- 
ty or  plenty  of  the  furs,  with  the  locality  of  the  fort. 
Before  beaver  became  so  scarce,  100  beaver  equalled  40 
marten  or  10  otter  or  300  musk-rat ;  25  beaver  equalled 
500  rabbit;  1  beaver  equalled  2  white  fox;  and  so  on 
down  the  scale.  But  no  set  table  of  values  can  be  given 
other  than  the  prices  realized  at  the  annual  sale  of 
Hudson's  Bay  furs,  held  publicly  in  London. 

To  understand  the  values  of  these  furs  to  the  In- 
dian, "  beaver  "  currency  must  be  compared  to  merchan- 
dise, one  beaver  buying  such  a  red  handkerchief  as 
trappers  wear  around  their  brows  to  notify  other  hunt- 
ers not  to  shoot;  one  beaver  buys  a  hunting-knife,  two 
an  axe,  from  eight  to  twenty  a  gun  or  rifle,  according 


THE  GREATEST  FUR  COMPANY  OF  THE  WORLD    195 

to  its  quality.  And  in  one  old  trading  list  I  found — 
vanity  of  vanities — "one  beaver  equals  looking-glass/' 

Trading  over,  the  trappers  disperse  to  their  winter 
hunting-grounds,  which  the  main  body  of  hunters  never 
leaves  from  October,  when  they  go  on  the  fall  hunt,  to 
June,  when  the  long  straggling  brigades  of  canoes  and 
keel  boats  and  pack  horses  and  jolting  ox-carts  come 
back  to  the  fort  with  the  harvest  of  winter  furs. 

Signs  unnoted  by  the  denizens  of  city  serve  to  guide 
the  trappers  over  trackless  wastes  of  illimitable  snow. 
A  whitish  haze  of  frost  may  hide  the  sun,  or  continuous 
snow-fall  blur  every  land-mark.  What  heeds  the  trap- 
per ?  The  slope  of  the  rolling  hills,  the  lie  of  the  frozen 
river-beds,  the  branches  of  underbrush  protruding 
through  billowed  drifts  are  hands  that  point  the  trap- 
per's compass.  For  those  hunters  who  have  gone  west- 
ward to  the  mountains,  the  task  of  threading  pathless 
forest  stillness  is  more  difficult.  At  a  certain  altitude 
in  the  mountains,  much  frequented  by  game  because  un- 
disturbed by  storms,  snow  falls — falls — falls,  without 
ceasing,  heaping  the  pines  with  snow  mushrooms,  blot- 
ting out  the  sun,  cloaking  in  heavy  white  flakes  the 
notched  bark  blazed  as  a  trail,  transforming  the  rus- 
tling green  forests  to  a  silent  spectral  world  without  a 
mark  to  direct  the  hunter.  Here  the  woodcraftsman's 
lore  comes  to  his  aid.  He  looks  to  the  snow-coned  tops 
of  the  pine  trees.  The  tops  of  pine  trees  lean  ever  so 
slightly  towards  the  rising  sun.  With  his  snow-shoes 
he  digs  away  the  snow  at  the  roots  of  trees  to  get  down 
to  the  moss.  Moss  grows  from  the  roots  of  trees  on 
the  shady  side — that  is,  the  north.  And  simplest  of  all, 
demanding  only  that  a  wanderer  use  his  eyes — which 
the  white  man  seldom  does — the  limbs  of  the  northern 


196  THE  STORY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

trees  are  most  numerous  on  the  south.  The  trapper 
may  be  waylaid  by  storms,  or  starved  by  sudden  migra- 
tion of  game  from  the  grounds  to  which  he  has  come, 
or  run  to  earth  by  the  ravenous  timber-wolves  that  pur- 
sue the  dog  teams  for  leagues ;  but  the  trapper  with  In- 
dian blood  in  his  veins  will  not  be  lost. 

One  imminent  danger  is  of  accident  beyond  aid.  A 
young  Indian  hunter  of  Moose  Factory  set  out  with  his 
wife  and  two  children  for  the  winter  hunting-grounds 
in  the  forest  south  of  James  Bay.  To  save  the  daily 
allowance  of  a  fish  for  each  dog,  they  did  not  take  the 
dog  teams.  When  chopping,  the  hunter  injured  his  leg. 
The  wound  proved  stubborn.  Game  was  scarce,  and 
they  had  not  enough  food  to  remain  in  the  lodge. 
Wrapping  her  husband  in  robes  on  the  long  toboggan 
sleigh,  the  squaw  placed  the  younger  child  beside  him 
and  with  the  other  began  tramping  through  the  forest 
drawing  the  sleigh  behind.  The  drifts  were  not  deep 
enough  for  swift  snow-shoeing  over  underbrush,  and 
their  speed  was  not  half  so  speedy  as  the  hunger  that 
pursues  northern  hunters  like  the  Fenris  Wolf  of  Norse 
myth.  The  woman  sank  exhausted  on  the  snow  and 
the  older  boy,  nerved  with  fear,  pushed  on  to  Moose 
Factory  for  help.  Guided  by  the  boy  back  through  the 
forests,  the  fort  people  found  the  hunter  dead  in  the 
sleigh,  the  mother  crouched  forward  unconscious  from 
cold,  stripped  of  the  clothing  which  she  had  wrapped 
round  the  child  taken  in  her  arms  to  warm  with  her 
own  body.  The  child  was  alive  and  well.  The  fur 
traders  nursed  the  woman  back  to  life,  though  she 
looked  more  like  a  withered  creature  of  eighty  than  a 
woman  barely  in  her  twenties.  She  explained  with  a 
simple  unconsciousness  of  heroism  that  the  ground  had 


THE  GREATEST  FUR  COMPANY  OF  THE  WORLD  197 

been  too  hard  for  her  to  bury  her  husband,  and  she  was 
afraid  to  leave  the  body  and  go  on  to  the  fort  lest  the 
wolves  should  molest  the  dead.* 

The  arrival  of  the  mail  packet  is  one  of  the  most 
welcome  breaks  in  the  monotony  of  life  at  the  fur  post. 
When  the  mail  comes,  all  white  habitants  of  the  fort 
takes  a  week's  holidays  to  read  letters  and  news  of  the 
outside  world. 

Railways  run  from  Lake  Superior  to  the  Pacific; 
but  off  the  line  of  railways  mail  is  carried  as  of  old. 
In  summer-time  overland  runners,  canoe,  and  company 
steamers  bear  the  mail  to  the  forts  of  Hudson  Bay, 
of  the  Saskatchewan,  of  the  Rockies,  and  the  MacKen- 
zie.  In  winter,  scampering  huskies  with  a  running  post- 
man winged  with  snow-shoes  dash  across  the  snowy 
wastes  through  silent  forests  to  the  lonely  forts  of  the 
bay,  or  slide  over  the  prairie  drifts  with  the  music  of 
tinkling  bells  and  soft  crunch-crunch  of  sleigh  runners 
through  the  snow  crust  to  the  leagueless  world  of  the 
Far  North. 

Forty  miles  a  day,  a  couch  of  spruce  boughs  where 
the  racquets  have  dug  a  hole  in  the  snow,  sleighs  placed 
on  edge  as  a  wind  break,  dogs  crouched  on  the  buffalo- 
robes  snarling  over  the  frozen  fish,  deep  hayings  from 
the  running  wolf-pack,  and  before  the  stars  have  faded 
from  the  frosty  sky,  the  mail-carrier  has  risen  and  is 
coasting  away  fast  as  the  huskies  can  gallop. 

Another  picturesque  feature  of  the  fur  trade  was 
the  long  caravan  of  ox-carts  that  used  to  screech  and 
creak  and  jolt  over  the  rutted  prairie  roads  between 

*  It  need  hardly  be  explained  that  it  is  the  prairie  Indian  and 
not  the  forest  Ojibway  who  places  the  body  on  high  scaffolding 
above  the  ground ;  hence  the  woman's  dilemma. 


198      THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

Winnipeg  and  St.  Paul.  More  than  1,500  Hudson's  Bay 
Company  carts  manned  by  500  traders  with  tawny 
spouses  and  black-eyed  impish  children,  squatted  on 
top  of  the  load,  left  Canada  for  St.  Paul  in  August  and 
returned  in  October.  The  carts  were  made  without 
a  rivet  of  iron.  Bent  wood  formed  the  tires  of  the  two 
wheels.  Hardwood  axles  told  their  woes  to  the  world 
in  the  scream  of  shrill  bagpipes.  Wooden  racks  took 
the  place  of  cart  box.  In  the  shafts  trod  a  staid  old  ox 
guided  from  the  horns  or  with  a  halter,  drawing  the 
load  with  collar  instead  of  a  yoke.  The  harness  was 
of  skin  thongs.  In  place  of  the  ox  sometimes  was  a 
"  shagganippy "  pony,  raw  and  unkempt,  which  the 
imps  lashed  without  mercy  or  the  slightest  inconve- 
nience to  the  horse. 

A  red  flag  with  the  letters  H.  B.  C.  in  white  dec- 
orated the  leading  cart.  During  the  Sioux  massacres 
the  fur  caravans  were  unmolested,  for  the  Indians  rec- 
ognised the  flags  and  wished  to  remain  on  good  terms 
with  the  fur  traders. 

Ox-carts  still  bring  furs  to  Hudson's  Bay  Company 
posts,  and  screech  over  the  corduroyed  swamps  of  the 
MacKenzie;  but  the  railway  has  replaced  the  caravan 
as  a  carrier  of  freight. 

Hudson's  Bay  Company  steamers  now  ply  on  the 
largest  of  the  inland  rivers  with  long  lines  of  fur-laden 
barges  in  tow;  but  the  canoe  brigades  still  bring  the 
winter's  hunt  to  the  forts  in  spring.  Five  to  eight 
craft  make  a  brigade,  each  manned  by  eight  paddlers 
with  an  experienced  steersman,  who  is  usually  also 
guide.  But  the  one  ranking  first  in  importance  is  the 
bowman,  whose  quick  eye  must  detect  signs  of  nearing 
rapids,  whose  steel-shod  pole  gives  the  cue  to  the  other 


SH       O 

2   x 
g   o 


W 


•S'g 


-*^i 

I. 


GREATEST  FUE  COMPANY  OF  THE  WORLD    199 

Hers  and  steers  the  craft  past  foamy  reefs.    The 
man  it  is  who  leaps  out  first  when  there  is  "  track- 
*>   " — pulling  the  craft  up-stream  by  tow-line — who 
ids  waist  high  in  ice  water  steadying  the  rocking 
•k  lest  a  sudden  swirl  spill  furs  to  the  bottom,  who 
.ds  out  the  packs  to  the  others  when  the  waters  are 
»  turbulent  for  "tracking"  and  there  must  be  a 
•rtage"  and  who   leads  the  brigade   on  a  run — 
1f  trot,  half  amble — overland  to  the  calmer  currents, 
ipes  "  are  the  measure  of  a  portage — that  is,  the 
pipes  smoked  while  the  voyageurs  are  on  the  run.    The 
bowman  it  is  who  can  thread  a  network  of  water-ways 
by  day  or  dark,  past  rapids  or  whirlpools,  with  the  cer- 
tainty of  an  arrow  to  the  mark.    On  all  long  trips  by 
dog  train  or  canoe,  pemmican  made  of  buffalo  meat  and 
marrow  put  in  air-tight  bags  was  the  standard  food. 
The  pemmican  now  used  is  of  moose  or  caribou  beef. 

The  only  way  to  get  an  accurate  idea  of  the  size  of 
the  kingdom  ruled  by  these  monarchs  t)f  the  lonely 
wastes  is  by  comparison. 

Take  a  map  of  North  America.  On  the  east  is 
Labrador,  a  peninsula  as  vast  as  Germany  and  Hol- 
land and  Belgium  and  half  of  France.  On  the  coast 
and  across  the  unknown  interior  are  the  magical  letters 
H.  B.  C.,  meaning  Hudson's  Bay  Company  fort  (past 
or  present),  a  little  whitewashed  square  with  eighteen- 
foot  posts  planted  picket-wise  for  a  wall,  match-box 
bastions  loopholed  for  musketry,  a  barracks-like  struc- 
ture across  the  court-yard  with  a  high  lookout  of  some 
sort  near  the  gate.  Here  some  trader  with  wife  and 
children  and  staff  of  Indian  servants  has  held  his  own 
against  savagery  and  desolating  loneliness.  In  one  of 
these  forts  Lord  Strathcona  passed  his  youth. 


200  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

Once  more  to  the  map.  With  one  prong  of  a  com- 
pass in  the  centre  of  Hudson  Bay,  describe  a  circle.  The 
northern  half  embraces  the  baffling  arctics;  but  on  the 
line  of  the  southern  circumference  like  beads  on  a 
string  are  Churchill  high  on  the  left,  York  below  in 
black  capitals  as  befits  the  importance  of  the  great  fur 
emporium  of  the  bay,  Severn  and  Albany  and  Moose 
and  Rupert  and  Fort  George  round  the  south,  and  to 
the  right,  larger  and  more  strongly  built  forts  than  in 
Labrador,  with  the  ruins  of  stone  walls  at  Churchill 
that  have  a  depth  of  fifteen  feet.  Six-pounders  once 
mounted  these  bastions.  The  remnants  of  galleries  for 
soldiery  run  round  the  inside  walls.  A  flag  floats  over 
each  fort  with  the  letters  H.  B.  C.*  Officers'  dwellings 
occupy  the  centre  of  the  court-yard.  Banked  against 
the  walls  are  the  men's  quarters,  fur  presses,  stables, 
storerooms.  Always  there  is  a  chapel,  at  one  fort  a 
hospital,  at  others  the  relics  of  stoutly  built  old  powder 
magazines  made  to  withstand  the  siege  of  hand  gre- 
nades tossed  in  by  French  assailants  from  the  bay,  who 
knew  that  the  loot  of  a  fur  post  was  better  harvest  than 
a  treasure  ship.  Elsewhere  two  small  bastions  situ- 
ated diagonally  across  from  each  other  were  sufficient  to 
protect  the  fur  post  by  sending  a  raking  fire  along  the 
walls;  but  here  there  was  danger  of  the  French  fleet, 
and  the  walls  were  built  with  bastion  and  trench  and 
rampart. 

Again  to  the  map.  Between  Hudson  Bay  and  the 
Rocky  Mountains  stretches  an  American  Siberia — the 
Barren  Lands.  Here,  too,  on  every  important  water- 

*  The  flag  was  hoisted  on  Sundays  to  notify  the  Indians  there 
would  be  no  trade. 


THE  GREATEST  FUR  COMPANY  OF  THE  WORLD    201 

way,  Athabasca  and  the  Liard  and  the  MacKenzie  into 
the  land  of  winter  night  and  midnight  sun,  extend  Hud- 
son's Bay  Company  posts.  We  think  of  these  northern 
streams  as  ice-jammed,  sluggish  currents,  with  mean 
log  villages  on  their  banks.  The  fur  posts  of  the  sub- 
arctics  are  not  imposing  with  picket  fences  in  place  of 
stockades,  for  no  French  foe  was  feared  here.  But  the 
MacKenzie  Kiver  is  one  of  the  longest  in  the  world,  with 
two  tributaries  each  more  than  1,000  miles  in  length. 
It  has  a  width  of  a  mile,  and  a  succession  of  rapids  that 
rival  the  St.  Lawrence,  and  palisaded  banks  higher  than 
the  Hudson  Kiver' s,  and  half  a  dozen  lakes  into  one  of 
which  you  could  drop  two  New  England  States  without 
raising  a  sand  bar. 

The  map  again.  Between  the  prairie  and  the  Paci- 
fic Ocean  is  a  wilderness  of  peaks,  a  Switzerland 
stretched  into  half  the  length  of  a  continent.  Here, 
too,  like  eagle  nests  in  rocky  fastnesses  are  fur  posts. 

Such  is  the  realm  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company 
to-day. 

Before  1812  there  was  no  international  boundary 
in  the  fur  trade.  But  after  the  war  Congress  barred 
out  Canadian  companies.  The  next  curtailment  of 
hunting-ground  came  in  1869-'70,  when  the  company 
surrendered  proprietary  rights  to  the  Canadian  Gov- 
ernment, retaining  only  the  right  to  trade  in  the  vast 
north  land.  The  formation  of  new  Canadian  provinces 
took  place  south  of  the  Saskatchewan;  but  north  the 
company  barters  pelts  undisturbed  as  of  old.  Yearly 
the  staffs  are  shifted  from  post  to  post  as  the  for- 
tunes of  the  hunt  vary;  but  the  principal  posts  not 
including  winter  quarters  for  a  special  hunt  have  prob- 
ably not  exceeded  two  hundred  in  number,  nor  fallen 


202      THE  STORY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

below  one  hundred  for  the  last  century.  Of  these  the 
greater  numbers  are  of  course  in  the  Far  North.  When 
the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  was  fighting  rivals,  Nor' 
Westers  from  Montreal,  Americans  from  St.  Louis,  it 
must  have  employed  as  traders,  packers,  coureurs,  ca- 
noe men,  hunters,  and  guides,  at  least  5,000  men;  for 
its  rival  employed  that  number,  and  "  The  Old  Lady," 
as  the  enemy  called  it,  always  held  her  own.  Over  this 
wilderness  army  were  from  250  to  300  officers,  each 
with  the  power  of  life  and  death  in  his  hands.  To  the 
honour  of  the  company,  be  it  said,  this  power  was  sel- 
dom abused.*  Occasionally  a  brutal  sea-captain  might 
use  lash  and  triangle  and  branding  along  the  northern 
coast ;  but  officers  defenceless  among  savage  hordes  must 
of  necessity  have  lived  on  terms  of  justice  with  their 
men. 

The  Canadian  Government  now  exercises  judicial 
functions;  but  where  less  than  700  mounted  police  pa- 
trol a  territory  as  large  as  Siberia,  the  company's  fac- 
tor is  still  the  chief  representative  of  the  law's  power. 
Times  without  number  under  the  old  regime  has  a  Hud- 
son's Bay  officer  set  out  alone  and  tracked  an  Indian 
murderer  to  hidden  fastness,  there  to  arrest  him  or 
shoot  him  dead  on  the  spot ;  because  if  murder  went  un- 
punished that  mysterious  impulse  to  kill  which  is  as 
rife  in  the  savage  heart  as  in  the  wolf's  would  work  its 
havoc  unchecked. 

Just  as  surely  as  "the  sun  rises  and  the  rivers 
flow"  the  savage  knows  when  the  hunt  fails  he  will 
receive  help  from  the  Hudson's  Bay  officer.  But  just 

*  Governor  Norton  will,  of  course,  be  recalled  as  the  most 
conspicuous  for  his  brutality. 


THE  GREATEST  FUR  COMPANY  OP  THE  WORLD    203 

as  surely  he  knows  if  he  commits  any  crime  that  same 
unbending,  fearless  white  man  will  pursue — and  pur- 
sue— and  pursue  guilt  to  the  death.  One  case  is  on  rec- 
ord of  a  trader  thrashing  an  Indian  within  an  inch 
of  his  life  for  impudence  to  officers  two  or  three  years 
before.  Of  course,  the  vendetta  may  cut  both  ways, 
the  Indian  treasuring  vengeance  in  his  heart  till  he  can 
wreak  it.  That  is  an  added  reason  why  the  white  man's 
justice  must  be  unimpeachable.  "Pro  pelle  cutem" 
says  the  motto  of  the  company  arms.  Without  flip- 
pancy it  might  be  said  "  Ay  eye  for  an  eye  and  a  tooth 
for  a  tooth,"  as  well  as  "  A  skin  for  a  skin  " — which  ex- 
plains the  freedom  from  crime  among  northern  Indians. 

And  who  are  the  subjects  living  under  this  Mosaic 
paternalism  ? 

Stunted  Eskimo  of  the  Far  North,  creatures  as  am- 
phibious as  the  seals  whose  coats  they  wear,  with  the 
lustreless  eyes  of  dwarfed  intelligence  and  the  agility 
of  seal  flippers  as  they  whisk  double-bladed  paddles 
from  side  to  side  of  the  darting  kyacks;  wandering 
Montagnais  from  the  domed  hills  of  Labrador,  lonely 
and  sad  and  silent  as  the  naked  desolation  of  their 
rugged  land;  Ojibways  soft-voiced  as  the  forest  glooms 
in  that  vast  land  of  spruce  tangle  north  of  the  Great 
Lakes;  Crees  and  Sioux  from  the  plains,  cunning  with 
the  stealth  of  creatures  that  have  hunted  and  been 
hunted  on  the  shelterless  prairie ;  Blackf eet  and  Crows, 
game  birds  of  the  foothills  that  have  harried  all  other 
tribes  for  tribute,  keen-eyed  as  the  eagles  on  the  moun- 
tains behind  them,  glorying  in  war  as  the  finest  kind 
of  hunting;  mountain  tribes — Stonies,  Kootenais,  Sho- 
shonies — splendid  types  of  manhood  because  only  the 
fittest  can  survive  the  hardships  of  the  mountains; 


204  THE  STOEY  OF  THE  TEAPPER 

coast  Indians,  Chinook  and  Chileoot — low  and  lazy  be- 
cause the  great  rivers  feed  them  with  salmon  and  they 
have  no  need  to  work. 

Over  these  lawless  Arabs  of  the  New  World  wilder- 
ness the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  has  ruled  for  two  and 
a  half  centuries  with  smaller  loss  of  life  in  the  aggre- 
gate than  the  railways  of  the  United  States  cause  in  a 
single  year. 

Hunters  have  been  lost  in  the  wilds.  White  trap- 
pers have  been  assassinated  by  Indians.  Forts  have 
been  wiped  out  of  existence.  Ten,  twenty,  thirty  tra- 
ders have  been  massacred  at  different  times.  But,  then, 
the  loss  of  life  on  railways  totals  up  to  thousands  in  a 
single  year. 

When  fighting  rivals  long  ago,  it  is  true  that  the 
Hudson's  Bay  Company  recognised  neither  human  nor 
divine  law.  Grant  the  charge  and  weigh  it  against  the 
benefits  of  the  company's  rule.  When  Hearne  visited 
Chippewyans  two  centuries  ago  he  found  the  Indians 
in  a  state  uncontaminated  by  the  trader;  and  that  state 
will  give  the  ordinary  reader  cold  shivers  of  horror  at 
the  details  of  massacre  and  degradation.  Every  visitor 
since  has  reported  the  same  tribe  improved  in  standard 
of  living  under  Hudson's  Bay  rule.  Recently  a  well- 
known  Canadian  governor  making  an  itinerary  of  the 
territory  round  the  bay  found  the  Indians  such  devout 
Christians  that  they  put  his  white  retinue  to  shame. 
Returning  to  civilization,  the  governor  was  observed  at- 
tending the  services  of  his  own  denomination  with  a 
greater  fury  than  was  his  wont.  Asked  the  reason,  he 
confided  to  a  club  friend  that  he  would  be  blanked  if 
he  could  allow  heathen  Indians  to  be  better  Christians 
than  he  was. 


THE  GREATEST  FUR  COMPANY  OP  THE  WORLD    205 

Some  of  the  shiftless  Indians  may  be  hopelessly  in 
debt  to  the  company  for  advanced  provisions,  but  if  the 
company  had  not  made  these  advances  the  Indians 
would  have  starved,  and  the  debt  is  never  exacted  by 
seizure  of  the  hunt  that  should  go  to  feed  a  family. 

Of  how  many  other  creditors  may  that  be  said  ?  Of 
how  many  companies  that  it  has  cared  for  the  sick, 
sought  the  lost,  fed  the  starving,  housed  the  homeless  ? 
With  all  its  faults,  that  is  the  record  of  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Company. 


CHAPTER   XV 

KOOT  AND  THE  BOB-CAT 

OLD  whaling  ships,  that  tumble  round  the  world 
and  back  again  from  coast  to  coast  over  strange  seas, 
hardly  ever  suffer  any  of  the  terrible  disasters  that  are 
always  overtaking  the  proud  men-of-war  and  swift 
liners  equipped  with  all  that  science  can  do  for  them 
against  misfortune.  Ask  an  old  salt  why  this  is,  and 
he  will  probably  tell  you  that  he  feels  his  way  forward 
or  else  that  he  steers  by  the  same  chart  as  that — jerk- 
ing his  thumb  sideways  from  the  wheel  towards  some 
sea  gull  careening  over  the  billows.  A  something,  that 
is  akin  to  the  instinct  of  wild  creatures  warning  them 
when  to  go  north  for  the  summer,  when  to  go  south 
for  the  winter,  when  to  scud  for  shelter  from  coming 
storm,  guides  the  old  whaler  across  chartless  seas. 

So  it  is  with  the  trapper.  He  may  be  caught  in 
one  of  his  great  steel-traps  and  perish  on  the  prairie. 
He  may  run  short  of  water  and  die  of  thirst  on  the 
desert.  He  may  get  his  pack  horses  tangled  up  in  a 
valley  where  there  is  no  game  and  be  reduced  to  the 
alternative  of  destroying  what  will  carry  him  back  to 
safety  or  starving  with  a  horse  still  under  him,  before 
he  can  get  over  the  mountains  into  another  valley — 
but  the  true  trapper  will  literally  never  lose  himself. 
Lewis  and  Clark  rightly  merit  the  fame  of  having  first 


ROOT  AND  THE  BOB-CAT  207 

explored  the  Missouri-Columbia  route;  but  years  be- 
fore the  Louisiana  purchase,  free  trappers  were  already 
on  the  Columbia.  David  Thompson  of  the  North- West 
Company  was  the  first  Canadian  to  explore  the  lower 
Columbia;  but  before  Thompson  had  crossed  the  Kock- 
ies,  French  hunters  were  already  ranging  the  forests 
of  the  Pacific  slope.  How  did  these  coasters  of  the 
wilds  guide  themselves  over  prairies  that  were  a  chart- 
less  sea  and  mountains  that  were  a  wilderness?  How 
does  the  wavey  know  where  to  find  the  rush-grown  in- 
land pools?  Who  tells  the  caribou  mother  to  seek  re- 
fuge on  islands  where  the  water  will  cut  off  the  wolves 
that  would  prey  on  her  young? 

Something,  which  may  be  the  result  of  generations 
of  accumulated  observation,  guides  the  wavey  and  the 
caribou.  Something,  which  may  be  the  result  of  un- 
conscious inference  from  a  life-time  of  observation, 
guides  the  man.  In  the  animal  we  call  it  instinct,  in 
the  man,  reason;  and  in  the  case  of  the  trapper  track- 
ing pathless  wilds,  the  conscious  reason  of  the  man 
seems  almost  merged  in  the  automatic  instinct  of  the 
brute.  It  is  not  sharp-sightedness — though  no  man 
is  sharper  of  sight  than  the  trapper.  It  is  not  acute- 
ness  of  hearing — though  the  trapper  learns  to  listen 
with  the  noiseless  stealth  of  the  pencil-eared  lynx.  It 
is  not  touch — in  the  sense  of  tactile  contact — any  more 
than  it  is  touch  that  tells  a  suddenly  awakened  sleeper 
of  an  unexpected  noiseless  presence  in  a  dark  room. 
It  is  something  deeper  than  the  tabulated  five  senses, 
a  sixth  sense — a  sense  of  feel,  without  contact — a  sense 
on  which  the  whole  sensate  world  writes  its  records  as 
on  a  palimpsest.  This  palimpsest  is  the  trapper's  chart, 
this  sense  of  feel,  his  weapon  against  the  instinct  of  the 


208  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

brute.  What  part  it  plays  in  the  life  of  every  ranger 
of  the  wilds  can  best  be  illustrated  by  telling  how  Koot 
found  his  way  to  the  fur  post  after  the  rabbit-hunt. 

When  the  midwinter  lull  falls  on  the  hunt,  there 
is  little  use  in  the  trapper  going  far  afield.  Moose 
have  "yarded  up."  Bear  have  "holed  up"  and  the 
beaver  are  housed  till  dwindling  stores  compel  them 
to  come  out  from  their  snow-hidden  domes.  There  are 
no  longer  any  buffalo  for  the  trapper  to  hunt  during 
the  lull;  but  what  buffalo  formerly  were  to  the  hunter, 
rabbit  are  to-day.  Shields  and  tepee  covers,  mocca- 
sins, caps  and  coats,  thongs  and  meat,  the  buffalo  used 
to  supply.  These  are  now  supplied  by  "wahboos — 
little  white  chap,"  which  is  the  Indian  name  for  rabbit. 

And  there  is  no  midwinter  lull  for  "  wahboos." 
While  the  "little  white  chap"  runs,  the  long-haired, 
owlish-eyed  lynx  of  the  Northern  forest  runs  too.  So 
do  all  the  lynx's  feline  cousins,  the  big  yellowish  cou- 
gar of  the  mountains  slouching  along  with  his  head 
down  and  his  tail  lashing  and  a  footstep  as  light  and 
sinuous  and  silent  as  the  motion  of  a  snake;  the  short- 
haired  lucifee  gorging  himself  full  of  "little  white 
chaps  "  and  stretching  out  to  sleep  on  a  limb  in  a  dap- 
ple of  sunshine  and  shadow  so  much  like  the  lucifee's 
skin  not  even  a  wolf  would  detect  the  sleeper;  the 
bunchy  bob-cat  bounding  and  skimming  over  the  snow 
for  all  the  world  like  a  bouncing  football  done  up  in 
gray  fur — all  members  of  the  cat  tribe  running  wher- 
ever the  "  little  white  chaps  "  run. 

So  when  the  lull  fell  on  the  hunt  and  the  mink 
trapping  was  well  over  and  marten  had  not  yet  begun, 
Koot  gathered  up  his  traps,  and  getting  a  supply  of 


KOOT  AND  THE  BOB-CAT  209 

provisions  at  the  fur  post,  crossed  the  white  wastes  of 
prairie  to  lonely  swamp  ground  where  dwarf  alder  and 
willow  and  cottonwood  and  poplar  and  pine  grew  in  a 
tangle.  A  few  old  logs  dovetailed  into  a  square  made 
the  wall  of  a  cabin.  Over  these  he  stretched  the  can- 
vas of  his  tepee  for  a  roof  at  a  sharp  enough  angle 
to  let  the  heavy  snow-fall  slide  off  from  its  own  weight. 
Moss  chinked  up  the  logs.  Snow  hanked  out  the  wind. 
Pine  boughs  made  the  floor,  two  logs  with  pine  boughs, 
a  bed.  An  odd-shaped  stump  served  as  chair  or  table; 
and  on  the  logs  of  the  inner  walls  hung  wedge-shaped 
slabs  of  cedar  to  stretch  the  skins.  A  caribou  curtain 
or  bear-skin  across  the  entrance  completed  Koot's 
winter  quarters  for  the  rabbit-hunt. 

Koot's  genealogy  was  as  vague  as  that  of  all  old 
trappers  hanging  round  fur  posts.  Part  of  him — that 
part  which  served  best  when  he  was  on  the  hunting- 
field — was  Ojibway.  The  other  part,  which  made  him 
improvise  logs  into  chair  and  table  and  bed,  was  white 
man;  and  that  served  him  best  when  he  came  to  bar- 
gain with  the  chief  factor  over  the  pelts.  At  the  fur 
post  he  attended  the  Catholic  mission.  On  the  hunt- 
ing-field, when  suddenly  menaced  by  some  great  dan- 
ger, he  would  cry  out  in  the  Indian  tongue  words  that 
meant  "  0  Great  Spirit !  "  And  it  is  altogether  prob- 
able that  at  the  mission  and  on  the  hunting-field,  Koot 
was  worshipping  the  same  Being.  When  he  swore — 
strange  commentary  on  civilization — he  always  used 
white  man's  oaths,  French  patois  or  straight  English. 

Though  old  hermits  may  be  found  hunting  alone 
through  the  Eockies,  Idaho,  Washington,  and  Minne- 
sota, trappers  do  not  usually  go  to  the  wilds  alone;  but 
there  was  so  little  danger  in  rabbit-snaring,  that  Koot 
15 


210  THE  STORY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

had  gone  out  accompanied  by  only  the  mongrel  dog 
that  had  drawn  his  provisions  from  the  fort  on  a  sort 
of  toboggan  sleigh. 

The  snow  is  a  white  page  on  which  the  wild  crea- 
tures write  their  daily  record  for  those  who  can  read. 
All  over  the  white  swamp  were  little  deep  tracks;  here, 
holes  as  if  the  runner  had  sunk;  there,  padded  marks 
as  from  the  bound — bound — bound  of  something  soft; 
then,  again,  where  the  thicket  was  like  a  hedge  with 
only  one  breach  through,  the  footprints  had  beaten  a 
little  hard  rut  walled  by  the  soft  snow.  Koot's  dog 
might  have  detected  a  motionless  form  under  the 
thicket  of  spiney  shrubs,  a  form  that  was  gray  almost 
to  whiteness  and  scarcely  to  be  distinguished  from  the 
snowy  underbrush  but  for-  the  blink  of  a  prism  light — 
the  rabbit's  eye.  If  the  dog  did  catch  that  one  tell- 
tale glimpse  of  an  eye  which  a  cunning  rabbit  would 
have  shut,  true  to  the  training  of  his  trapper  master 
he  would  give  no  sign  of  the  discovery  except  perhaps 
the  pricking  forward  of  both  ears.  Koot  himself  pre- 
served as  stolid  a  countenance  as  the  rabbit  playing 
dead  or  simulating  a  block  of  wood.  Where  the  foot- 
prints ran  through  the  breached  hedge,  Koot  stooped 
down  and  planted  little  sticks  across  the  runway  till 
there  was  barely  room  for  a  weasel  to  pass.  Across 
the  open  he  suspended  a  looped  string  hung  from  a 
twig  bent  so  that  the  slightest  weight  in  the  loop 
would  send  it  up  with  a  death  jerk  for  anything  caught 
in  the  tightening  twine. 

All  day  long,  Koot  goes  from  hedge  to  hedge,  from 
runway  to  runway,  choosing  always  the  places  where 
natural  barriers  compel  the  rabbit  to  take  this  path 
and  no  other,  travelling  if  he  can  in  a  circle  from  his 


KOOT  AND  THE  BOB-CAT  211 

cabin  so  that  the  last  snare  set  will  bring  him  back 
with  many  a  zigzag  to  the  first  snare  made.  If  rab- 
bits were  plentiful — as  they  always  were  in  the  fur 
country  of  the  North  except  during  one  year  in  seven 
when  an  epidemic  spared  the  land  from  a  rabbit  pest — 
Root's  circuit  of  snares  would  run  for  miles  through 
the  swamp.  Traps  for  large  game  would  be  set  out  so 
that  the  circuit  would  require  only  a  day;  but  where 
rabbits  are  numerous,  the  foragers  that  prey — wolf 
and  wolverine  and  lynx  and  bob-cat — will  be  numer- 
ous, too;  and  the  trapper  will  not  set  out  more  snares 
than  he  can  visit  twice  a  day.  Noon — the  Indian's 
hour  of  the  short  shadow — is  the  best  time  for  the 
first  visit,  nightfall,  the  time  of  no  shadow  at  all,  for 
the  second.  If  the  trapper  has  no  wooden  door  to  his 
cabin,  and  in  it — instead  of  caching  in  a  tree — keeps 
fish  or  bacon  that  may  attract  marauding  wolverine, 
he  will  very  probably  leave  his  dogs  on  guard  while  he 
makes  the  round  of  the  snares. 

Finding  tracks  about  the  shack  when  he  came  back 
for  his  noonday  meal,  Koot  shouted  sundry  instruc- 
tions into  the  mongrel's  ear,  emphasized  them  with  a 
moccasin  kick,  picked  up  the  sack  in  which  he  carried 
bait,  twine,  and  traps,  and  set  out  in  the  evening  to 
make  the  round  of  his  snares,  unaccompanied  by  the 
dog.  Rabbit  after  rabbit  he  found,  gray  and  white, 
hanging  stiff  and  stark,  dead  from  their  own  weight, 
strangled  in  the  twine  snares.  Snares  were  set  anew, 
the  game  strung  over  his  shoulder,  and  Koot  was 
walking  through  the  gray  gloaming  for  the  cabin  when 
that  strange  sense  of  feel  told  him  that  he  was  being 
followed.  What  was  it?  Could  it  be  the  dog?  He 
whistled — he  called  it  by  name. 


212  THE  STORY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

In  all  the  world,  there  is  nothing  so  ghostly  silent, 
so  deathly  quiet  as  the  swamp  woods,  muffled  in  the 
snow  of  midwinter,  just  at  nightfall.  By  day,  the 
grouse  may  utter  a  lonely  cluck-cluck,  or  the  snow- 
buntings  chirrup  and  twitter  and  flutter  from  drift 
to  hedge-top,  or  the  saucy  jay  shriek  some  scolding 
impudence.  A  squirrel  may  chatter  out  his  noisy  pro- 
test at  some  thief  for  approaching  the  nuts  which  lie 
cached  under  the  rotten  leaves  at  the  foot  of  the  tree, 
or  the  sun-warmth  may  set  the  melting  snow  shower- 
ing from  the  swan's-down  branches  with  a  patter  like 
rain.  But  at  nightfall  the  frost  has  stilled  the  drip 
of  thaw.  Squirrel  and  bird  are  wrapped  in  the  utter 
quiet  of  a  gray  darkness.  And  the  marauders  that 
fill  midnight  with  sharp  bark,  shrill  trembling  scream, 
deep  baying  over  the  snow  are  not  yet  abroad  in  the 
woods.  All  is  shadowless — stillness — a  quiet  that  is 
audible. 

Koot  turned  sharply  and  whistled  and  called  his 
dog.  There  wasn't  a  sound.  Later  when  the  frost 
began  to  tighten,  sap-frozen  twigs  would  snap.  The 
ice  of  the  swamp,  frozen  like  rock,  would  by-and-bye 
crackle  with  the  loud  echo  of  a  pistol-shot — crackle — 
and  strike — and  break  as  if  artillery  were  firing  a  fusil- 
lade and  infantry  shooters  answering  sharp.  By-and- 
bye,  moon  and  stars  and  Northern  Lights  would  set  the 
shadows  dancing;  and  the  wail  of  the  cougar  would  be 
echoed  by  the  lifting  scream  of  its  mate.  But  now, 
was  not  a  sound,  not  a  motion,  not  a  shadow,  only  the 
noiseless  stillness,  the  shadowless  quiet,  and  the 
•feel,  the  feel  of  something  back  where  the  darkness  was 
gathering  like  a  curtain  in  the  bush. 

It  might,  of  course,  be  only  a  silly  long-ears  loping 


KOOT  AND  THE  BOB-CAT  213 

under  cover  parallel  to  the  man,  looking  with  rabbit 
curiosity  at  this  strange  newcomer  to  the  swamp  home 
of  the  animal  world.  Root's  sense  of  feel  told  him 
that  it  wasn't  a  rabbit;  but  he  tried  to  persuade  him- 
self that  it  was,  the  way  a  timid  listener  persuades  her- 
self that  creaking  floors  are  burglars.  Thinking  of 
his  many  snares,  Koot  smiled  and  walked  on.  Then  it 
came  again,  that  feel  of  something  coursing  behind 
the  underbrush  in  the  gloom  of  the  gathering  darkness. 
Koot  stopped  short — and  listened — and  listened — 
listened  to  a  snow-muffled  silence,  to  a  desolating  soli- 
tude that  pressed  in  on  the  lonely  hunter  like  the 
waves  of  a  limitless  sea  round  a  drowning  man. 

The  sense  of  feel  that  is  akin  to  brute  instinct  gave 
him  the  impression  of  a  presence.  Eeason  that  is 
man's  told  him  what  it  might  be  and  what  to  do.  Was 
he  not  carrying  the  snared  rabbits  over  his  shoulder? 
Some  hungry  flesh-eater,  more  bloodthirsty  than  cour- 
ageous, was  still  hunting  him  for  the  food  on  his  back 
and  only  lacked  the  courage  to  attack.  Koot  drew  a 
steel-trap  from  his  bag.  He  did  not  wish  to  waste  a 
rabbit-skin,  so  he  baited  the  spring  with  a  piece  of  fat 
bacon,  smeared  the  trap,  the  snow,  everything  that  he 
had  touched  with  a  rabbit-skin,  and  walked  home 
through  the  deepening  dark  to  the  little  log  cabin 
where  a  sharp  "  woof  -woof  "  of  welcome  awaited  him. 

That  night,  in  addition  to  the  skins  across  the  door- 
way, Koot  jammed  logs  athwart;  "to  keep  the  cold 
out "  he  told  himself.  Then  he  kindled  a  fire  on  the 
rough  stone  hearth  built  at  one  end  of  the  cabin  and 
with  the  little  clay  pipe  beneath  his  teeth  sat  down 
on  the  stump  chair  to  broil  rabbit.  The  waste  of  the 
rabbit  he  had  placed  in  traps  outside  the  lodge.  Once 


214:  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

his  dog  sprang  alert  with  pricked  ears.  Man  and  dog 
heard  the  sniff — sniff — sniff  of  some  creature  attracted 
to  the  cabin  by  the  smell  of  broiling  meat,  and  now 
rummaging  at  its  own  risk  among  the  traps.  And 
once  when  Koot  was  stretched  out  on  a  bear-skin  be- 
fore the  fire  puffing  at  his  pipe-stem,  drying  his  moc- 
casins and  listening  to  the  fusillade  of  frost  rending 
ice  and  earth,  a  long  low  piercing  wail  rose  and  fell 
and  died  away.  Instantly  from  the  forest  of  the 
swamp  came  the  answering  scream — a  lifting  tumbling 
eldritch  shriek. 

"  I  should  have  set  two  traps,"  says  Koot.  "  They 
are  out  in  pairs." 

Black  is  the  flag  of  danger  to  the  rabbit  world. 
The  antlered  shadows  of  the  naked  poplar  or  the  toss- 
ing arms  of  the  restless  pines,  the  rabbit  knows  to  be 
harmless  shadows  unless  their  dapple  of  sun  and  shade 
conceals  a  brindled  cat.  But  a  shadow  that  walks  and 
runs  means  to  the  rabbit  a  foe;  so  the  wary  trapper 
prefers  to  visit  his  snares  at  the  hour  of  the  short 
shadow. 

It  did  not  surprise  the  trapper  after  he  had  heard 
the  lifting  wail  from  the  swamp  woods  the  night  be- 
fore that  the  bacon  in  the  trap  lay  untouched.  The 
still  hunter  that  had  crawled  through  the  underbrush 
lured  by  the  dead  rabbits  over  Koot's  shoulder  wanted 
rabbit,  not  bacon.  But  at  the  nearest  rabbit  snare, 
where  a  poor  dead  prisoner  had  been  torn  from  the 
twine,  were  queer  padded  prints  in  the  snow,  not  of 
the  rabbit's  making.  Koot  stood  looking  at  the  tell- 
tale mark.  The  dog's  ears  were  all  aprick.  So  was 
Koot's  sense  of  feel,  but  he  couldn't  make  this  thing 


KOOT  AND  THE  BOB-CAT  215 

out.  There  was  no  trail  of  approach  or  retreat.  The 
padded  print  of  the  thief  was  in  the  snow  as  if  the  ani- 
mal had  dropped  from  the  sky  and  gone  back  to  the 
sky. 

Koot  measured  off  ten  strides  from  the  rifled  snare 
and  made  a  complete  circuit  round  it.  The  rabbit 
runway  cut  athwart  the  snow  circle,  but  no  mark  like 
that  shuffling  padded  print. 

"It  isn't  a  wolverine,  and  it  isn't  a  fisher,  and  it 
isn't  a  coyote,"  Koot  told  himself. 

The  dog  emitted  stupid  little  sharp  barks  looking 
everywhere  and  nowhere  as  if  he  felt  what  he  could 
neither  see  nor  hear.  Koot  measured  off  ten  strides 
more  from  this  circuit  and  again  walked  completely 
round  the  snare.  Not  even  the  rabbit  runways  cut 
this  circle.  The  white  man  grows  indignant  when  baf- 
fled, the  Indian  superstitious.  The  part  that  was 
white  man  in  Koot  sent  him  back  to  the  scene  in  quick 
jerky  steps  to  scatter  poisoned  rabbit  meat  over  the 
snow  and  set  a  trap  in  which  he  readily  sacrificed  a 
full-grown  bunny.  The  part  that  was  Indian  set  a 
world  of  old  memories  echoing,  memories  that  were  as 
much  Koot's  nature  as  the  swarth  of  his  skin,  memo- 
ries that  Koot's  mother  and  his  mother's  ancestors 
held  of  the  fabulous  man-eating  wolf  called  the  loup- 
garou,  and  the  great  white  beaver  father  of  all  beavers 
and  all  Indians  that  glided  through  the  swamp  mists 
at  night  like  a  ghost,  and  the  monster  grisly  that 
stalked  with  uncouth  gambols  through  the  dark  de- 
vouring benighted  hunters. 

This  time  when  the  mongrel  uttered  his  little 
sharp  barkings  that  said  as  plainly  as  a  dog  could 
speak,  "Something's  somewhere!  Be  careful  there — 


216      THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

oh! — I'll  be  on  to  you  in  just  one  minute!"  Koot 
kicked  the  dog  hard  with  plain  anger;  and  his  anger 
was  at  himself  because  his  eyes  and  his  ears  failed  to 
localize,  to  reaZ-ize,  to  visualize  what  those  little  pricks 
and  shivers  tingling  down  to  his  finger-tips  meant. 
Then  the  civilized  man  came  uppermost  in  Koot  and 
he  marched  off  very  matter  of  fact  to  the  next  snare. 

But  if  Koot's  vision  had  been  as  acute  as  his  sense 
of  feel  and  he  had  glanced  up  to  the  topmost  spreading 
bough  of  a  pine  just  above  the  snare,  he  might  have 
detected  lying  in  a  dapple  of  sun  and  shade  something 
with  large  owl  eyes,  something  whose  pencilled  ear- 
tufts  caught  the  first  crisp  of  the  man's  moccasins 
over  the  snow-crust.  Then  the  ear-tufts  were  laid 
flat  back  against  a  furry  form  hardly  differing  from 
the  dapple  of  sun  and  shade.  The  big  owl  eyes  closed 
to  a  tiny  blinking  slit  that  let  out  never  a  ray  of  tell- 
tale light.  The  big  round  body  mottled  gray  and 
white  like  the  snowy  tree  widened — stretched — flat- 
tened till  it  was  almost  a  part  of  the  tossing  pine 
bough.  Only  when  the  man  and  dog  below  the  tree  had 
passed  far  beyond  did  the  pencilled  ears  blink  forward 
and  the  owl  eyes  open  and  the  big  body  bunch  out  like 
a  cat  with  elevated  haunches  ready  to  spring. 

But  by-and-bye  the  man's  snares  began  to  tell  on 
the  rabbits.  They  grew  scarce  and  timid.  And  the 
thing  that  had  rifled  the  rabbit  snares  grew  hunger- 
bold.  One  day  when  Koot  and  the  dog  were  skimming 
across  the  billowy  drifts,  something  black  far  ahead 
bounced  up,  caught  a  bunting  on  the  wing,  and  with 
another  bounce  disappeared  among  the  trees. 

Koot  said  one  word — "  Cat ! " — and  the  dog  was  off 
full  cry. 


KOOT  AND  THE  BOB-CAT  217 

Ever  since  he  had  heard  that  wailing  call  from  the 
swamp  woods,  he  had  known  that  there  were  rival  hunt- 
ers, the  keenest  of  all  still  hunters  among  the  rabbits. 
Every  day  he  came  upon  the  trail  of  their  ravages, 
rifled  snares,  dead  squirrels,  torn  feathers,  even  the  re- 
mains of  a  fox  or  a  coon.  And  sometimes  he  could 
tell  from  the  printings  on  the  white  page  that  the  still 
hunter  had  been  hunted  full  cry  by  coyote  or  timber- 
wolf.  Against  these  wolfish  foes  the  cat  had  one  sure 
refuge  always — a  tree.  The  hungry  coyote  might  try 
to  starve  the  bob-cat  into  surrender;  but  just  as  often, 
the  bob-cat  could  starve  the  coyote  into  retreat;  for  if 
a  foolish  rabbit  darted  past,  what  hungry  coyote  could 
help  giving  chase?  The  tree  had  even  defeated  both 
dog  and  man  that  first  week  when  Koot  could  not  find 
the  cat.  But  a  dog  in  full  chase  could  follow  the  trail 
to  a  tree,  and  a  man  could  shoot  into  the  tree. 

As  the  rabbits  decreased,  Koot  set  out  many  traps 
for  the  bob-cats  now  reckless  with  hunger,  steel-traps 
and  deadfalls  and  pits  and  log  pens  with  a  live  grouse 
clucking  inside.  The  midwinter  lull  was  a  busy  sea- 
son for  Koot. 

Towards  March,  the  sun-glare  has  produced  a  crust 
on  the  snow  that  is  almost  like  glass.  For  Koot  on  his 
snow-shoes  this  had  no  danger;  but  for  the  mongrel 
that  was  to  draw  the  pelts  back  to  the  fort,  the  snow 
crust  was  more  troublesome  than  glass.  Where  the 
crust  was  thick,  with  Koot  leading  the  way  snow-shoes 
and  dog  and  toboggan  glided  over  the  drifts  as  if  on 
steel  runners.  But  in  midday  the  crust  was  soft  and 
the  dog  went  floundering  through  as  if  on  thin  ice,  the 
sharp  edge  cutting  his  feet.  Koot  tied  little  buck- 
skin sacks  round  the  dog's  feet  and  made  a  few  more 


218      THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

rounds  of  the  swamp;  but  the  crust  was  a  sign  that 
warned  him  it  was  time  to  prepare  for  the  marten- 
hunt.  To  leave  his  furs  at  the  fort,  he  must  cross  the 
prairie  while  it  was  yet  good  travelling  for  the  dog. 
Dismantling  the  little  cabin,  Koot  packed  the  pelts  on 
the  toboggan,  roped  all  tightly  so  there  could  be  no 
spill  from  an  upset,  and  putting  the  mongrel  in  the 
traces,  led  the  way  for  the  fort  one  night  when  the 
snow-crust  was  hard  as  ice. 

The  moon  came  up  over  the  white  fields  in  a  great 
silver  disk.  Between  the  running  man  and  the  silver 
moon  moved  black  skulking  forms — the  foragers  on 
their  night  hunt.  Sometimes  a  fox  loped  over  a  drift, 
or  a  coyote  rose  ghostly  from  the  snow,  or  timber- 
wolves  dashed  from  wooded  ravines  and  stopped-  to  look 
till  Koot  fired  a  shot  that  sent  them  galloping. 

In  the  dark  that  precedes  daylight,  Koot  camped 
beside  a  grove  of  poplars — that  is,  he  fed  the  dog  a 
fish,  whittled  chips  to  make  a  fire  and  boil  some  tea 
for  himself,  then  digging  a  hole  in  the  drift  with 
his  snow-shoe,  laid  the  sleigh  to  windward  and  cud- 
dled down  between  bear-skins  with  the  dog  across  his 
feet. 

Daylight  came  in  a  blinding  glare  of  sunshine  and 
white  snow.  The  way  was  untrodden.  Koot  led  at 
an  ambling  run,  followed  by  the  dog  at  a  fast  trot,  so 
that  the  trees  were  presently  left  far  on  the  offing  and 
the  runners  were  out  on  the  bare  white  prairie  with 
never  a  mark,  tree  or  shrub,  to  break  the  dazzling 
reaches  of  sunshine  and  snow  from  horizon  to  horizon. 
A  man  who  is  breaking  the  way  must  keep  his  eyes  on 
the  ground;  and  the  ground  was  so  blindingly  bright 


KOOT  AND  THE  BOB-CAT  219 

that  Koot  began  to  see  purple  and  yellow  and  red 
patches  dancing  wherever  he  looked  on  the  snow.  He 
drew  his  capote  over  his  face  to  shade  his  eyes;  but  the 
pace  and  the  sun  grew  so  hot  that  he  was  soon  running 
again  unprotected  from  the  blistering  light. 

Towards  the  afternoon,  Koot  knew  that  something 
had  gone  wrong.  Some  distance  ahead,  he  saw  a  black 
object  against  the  snow.  On  the  unbroken  white,  it 
looked  almost  as  big  as  a  barrel  and  seemed  at  least  a 
mile  away.  Lowering  his  eyes,  Koot  let  out  a  spurt  of 
speed,  and  the  next  thing  he  knew  he  had  tripped  his 
snow-shoe  and  tumbled.  Scrambling  up,  he  saw  that  a 
stick  had  caught  the  web  of  his  snow-shoe;  but  where 
was  the  barrel  for  which  he  had  been  steering?  There 
wasn't  any  barrel  at  all — the  barrel  was  this  black 
stick  which  hadn't  been  fifty  yards  away.  Koot  rubbed 
his  eyes  and  noticed  that  black  and  red  and  purple 
patches  were  all  over  the  snow.  The  drifts  were  heav- 
ing and  racing  after  each  other  like  waves  on  an  angry 
sea.  He  did  not  go  much  farther  that  day;  for  every 
glint  of  snow  scorched  his  eyes  like  a  hot  iron.  He 
camped  at  the  first  bluff  and  made  a  poultice  of  cold 
tea  leaves  which  he  laid  across  his  blistered  face  for 
the  night. 

Any  one  who  knows  the  tortures  of  snow-blindness 
will  understand  why  Koot  did  not  sleep  that  night. 
It  was  a  long  night  to  the  trapper,  such  a  very  long 
night  that  the  sun  had  been  up  for  two  hours  before 
its  heat  burned  through  the  layers  of  his  capote  into 
his  eyes  and  roused  him  from  sheer  pain.  Then  he 
sprang  up,  put  up  an  ungantled  hand  and  knew  from 
the  heat  of  the  sun  that  it  was  broad  day.  But  when 
he  took  the  bandage  off  his  eyes,  all  he  saw  was  a  black 


220      THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

curtain  one  moment,  rockets  and  wheels  and  dancing 
patches  of  purple  fire  the  next. 

Koot  was  no  fool  to  become  panicky  and  feeble 
from  sudden  peril.  He  knew  that  he  was  snow-blind 
on  a  pathless  prairie  at  least  two  days  away  from  the 
fort.  To  wait  until  the  snow-blindness  had  healed 
would  risk  the  few  provisions  that  he  had  and  perhaps 
expose  him  to  a  blizzard.  The  one  rule  of  the  trap- 
per's life  is  to  go  ahead,  let  the  going  cost  what  it  may; 
and  drawing  his  capote  over  his  face,  Koot  went  on. 

The  heat  of  the  sun  told  him  the  directions;  and 
when  the  sun  went  down,  the  crooning  west  wind, 
bringing  thaw  and  snow-crust,  was  his  compass.  And 
when  the  wind  fell,  the  tufts  of  shrub-growth  sticking 
through  the  snow  pointed  to  the  warm  south.  Now 
he  tied  himself  to  his  dog;  and  when  he  camped  be- 
side trees  into  which  he  had  gone  full  crash  before  he 
knew  they  were  there,  he  laid  his  gun  beside  the  dog 
and  sleigh.  Going  out  the  full  length  of  his  cord,  he 
whittled  the  chips  for  his  fire  and  found  his  way  back 
by  the  cord. 

On  the  second  day  of  his  blindness,  no  sun  came  up; 
nor  could  he  guide  himself  by  the  feel  of  the  air,  for 
there  was  no  wind.  It  was  one  of  the  dull  dead  gray 
days  that  precedes  storms.  How  would  he  get  his  di- 
rections to  set  out?  Memory  of  last  night's  travel 
might  only  lead  him  on  the  endless  circling  of  the  lost. 
Koot  dug  his  snow-shoe  to  the  base  of  a  tree,  found 
moss,  felt  it  growing  on  only  one  side  of  the  tree,  knew 
that  side  must  be  the  shady  cold  side,  and  so  took  his 
bearings  from  what  he  thought  was  the  north. 

Koot  said  the  only  time  that  he  knew  any  fear  was 
on  the  evening  of  the  last  day.  The  atmosphere  boded 


KOOT  AND  THE  BOB-CAT  221 

storm.  The  fort  lay  in  a  valley.  Somewhere  between 
Koot  and  that  valley  ran  a  trail.  What  if  he  had 
crossed  the  trail?  What  if  the  storm  came  and  wiped 
out  the  trail  before  he  could  reach  the  fort?  All  day, 
whisky-jack  and  snow-bunting  and  fox  scurried  from 
his  presence;  but  this  night  in  the  dusk  when  he  felt 
forward  on  his  hands  and  knees  for  the  expected  trail, 
the  wild  creatures  seemed  to  grow  bolder.  He  im- 
agined that  he  felt  the  coyotes  closer  than  on  the  other 
nights.  And  then  the  fearful  thought  came  that  he 
might  have  passed  the  trail  unheeding.  Should  he 
turn  back? 

Afraid  to  go  forward  or  back,  Koot  sank  on  the 
ground,  unhooded  his  face  and  tried  to  -force  his  eyes 
to  see.  The  pain  brought  biting  salty  tears.  It  was 
quite  useless.  Either  the  night  was  very  dark,  or  the 
eyes  were  very  blind. 

And  then  white  man  or  Indian — who  shall  say 
which  came  uppermost? — Koot  cried  out  to  the  Great 
Spirit.  In  mockery  back  came  the  saucy  scold  of  a 
jay. 

But  that  was  enough  for  Koot — it  was  prompt 
answer  to  his  prayer;  for  where  do  the  jays  quarrel  and 
fight  and  flutter  but  on  the  trail?  Eunning  eagerly 
forward,  the  trapper  felt  the  ground.  The  rutted 
marks  of  a  "  jumper  "  sleigh  cut  the  hard  crust.  With 
a  shout,  Koot  headed  down  the  sloping  path  to  the 
valley  where  lay  the  fur  post,  the  low  hanging  smoke 
of  whose  chimneys  his  eager  nostrils  had  already 
sniffed. 


CHAPTER   XVI 

OTHEB  LITTLE  ANIMALS  BESIDES  WAHBOOS  THE  BAB- 
BIT— BEING  AN  ACCOUNT  OF  MUSQUASH  THE  MUSK- 
BAT,  8IKAK  THE  SKUNK,  WENUSK  THE  BADGEB, 
AND  OTHEBS 

I 

Musquash  the  Musk-rat 

EVEBY  chapter  in  the  trapper's  life  is  not  a 
"  stunt/' 

There  are  the  uneventful  days  when  the  trapper 
seems  to  do  nothing  but  wander  aimlessly  through  the 
woods  over  the  prairie  along  the  margin  of  rush-grown 
marshy  ravines  where  the  stagnant  waters  lap  lazily 
among  the  flags,  though  a  feathering  of  ice  begins  to 
rim  the  quiet  pools  early  in  autumn.  Unless  he  is 
duck-shooting  down  there  in  the  hidden  slough  where 
is  a  great  "  quack-quack  "  of  young  teals,  the  trapper 
may  not  uncase  his  gun.  For  a  whole  morning  he  lies 
idly  in  the  sunlight  beside  some  river  where  a  round- 
ish black  head  occasionally  bobs  up  only  to  dive  under 
when  it  sees  the  man.  Or  else  he  sits  by  the  hour  still 
as  a  statue  on  the  mossy  log  of  a  swamp  where  a  long 
wriggling — wriggling  trail  marks  the  snaky  motion  of 
some  creature  below  the  amber  depths. 

To  the  city  man  whose  days  are  regulated  by  clock- 
work and  electric  trams  with  the  ceaseless  iteration  of 


MUSQUASH  THE  MUSK-RAT  223 

gongs  and  "step  fast  there!"  such  a  life  seems  the 
type  of  utter  laziness.  But  the  best-learned  lessons  are 
those  imbibed  unconsciously  and  the  keenest  pleasures 
come  unsought.  Perhaps  when  the  great  profit-and- 
loss  account  of  the  hereafter  is  cast  up,  the  trapper 
may  be  found  to  have  a  greater  sum  total  of  happi- 
ness, of  usefulness,  of  real  knowledge  than  the  multi- 
millionaire whose  life  was  one  buzzing  round  of  drive 
and  worry  and  grind.  Usually  the  busy  city  man  has 
spent  nine  or  ten  of  the  most  precious  years  of  his 
youth  in  study  and  travel  to  learn  other  men's  thoughts 
for  his  own  life's  work.  The  trapper  spends  an  idle 
month  or  two  of  each  year  wandering  through  a  wild 
world  learning  the  technic  of  his  craft  at  first  hand. 
And  the  trapper's  learning  is  all  done  leisurely,  calmly, 
without  bluster  or  drive,  just  as  nature  herself  car- 
ries on  the  work  of  her  realm. 

On  one  of  these  idle  days  when  the  trapper  seems 
to  be  slouching  so  lazily  over  the  prarie  comes  a  whiff 
of  dank  growth  on  the  crisp  autumn  air.  Like  all 
wild  creatures  travelling  up-wind,  the  trapper  at  once 
heads  a  windward  course.  It  comes  again,  just  a  whiff 
as  if  the  light  green  musk-plant  were  growing  some- 
where on  a  dank  bank.  But  ravines  are  not  dank  in 
the  clear  fall  days;  and  by  October  the  musk-plant  has 
wilted  dry.  This  is  a  fresh  living  odour  with  all  the 
difference  between  it  and  dead  leaves  that  there  is  be- 
tween June  roses  and  the  dried  dust  of  a  rose  jar.  The 
wind  falls.  He  may  not  catch  the  faintest  odour  of 
swamp  growth  again,  but  he  knows  there  must  be  stag- 
nant water  somewhere  in  these  prairie  ravines;  and  a 
sense  that  is  part  feel,  part  intuition,  part  inference 
from  what  the  wind  told  of  the  marsh  smell,  leads  his 


224:  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

footsteps  down  the  browned  hillside  to  the  soggy  bot- 
tom of  a  slough. 

A  covey  of  teals — very  young,  or  they  would  not  be 
so  bold — flackers  up,  wings  about  with  a  clatter,  then 
settles  again  a  space  farther  ahead  when  the  ducks  see 
that  the  intruder  remains  so  still.  The  man  parts  the 
flags,  sits  down  on  a  log  motionless  as  the  log  itself — 
and  watches!  Something  else  had  taken  alarm  from 
the  crunch  of  the  hunter's  moccasins  through  the  dry 
reeds;  for  a  wriggling  trail  is  there,  showing  where  a 
creature  has  dived  below  and  is  running  among  the  wet 
under-tangle.  Not  far  off  on  another  log  deep  in  the 
shade  of  the  highest  flags  solemnly  perches  a  small 
prairie-owl.  It  is  almost  the  russet  shade  of  the  dead 
log.  It  hunches  up  and  blinks  stupidly  at  all  this 
noise  in  the  swamp. 

"  Oho,"  thinks  the  trapper,  "  so  I've  disturbed  a 
still  hunt,"  and  he  sits  if  anything  stiller  than  ever, 
only  stooping  to  lay  his  gun  down  and  pick  up  a  stone. 

At  first  there  is  nothing  but  the  quacking  of  the 
ducks  at  the  far  end  of  the  swamp.  A  lapping  of  the 
water  against  the  brittle  flags  and  a  water-snake  has 
splashed  away  to  some  dark  haunt.  The  whisky-jack 
calls  out  officious  note  from  a  topmost  bough,  as  much 
as  to  say:  "It's  all  right!  Me — me! — I'm  always 
there! — I've  investigated! — it's  all  right! — he's  quite 
harmless! "  And  away  goes  the  jay  on  business  of 
state  among  the  gopher  mounds. 

Then  the  interrupted  activity  of  the  swamp  is  re- 
sumed, scolding  mother  ducks  reading  the  riot  act  to 
young  teals,  old  geese  coming  craning  and  craning 
their  long  necks  to  drink  at  the  water's  edge,  lizards 
and  water-snakes  splashing  down  the  banks,  midgets 


MUSQUASH  THE  MUSK-RAT  225 

and  gnats  sunning  themselves  in  clouds  during  the 
warmth  of  the  short  autumn  days,  with  a  feel  in  the 
air  as  of  crisp  ripeness,  drying  fruit,  the  harvest-home 
of  the  year.  In  all  the  prairie  region  north  and  west  of 
Minnesota — the  Indian  land  of  "sky-coloured  water" 
— the  sloughs  lie  on  the  prairie  under  a  crystal  sky  that 
turns  pools  to  silver.  On  this  almost  motionless  sur- 
face are  mirrored  as  if  by  an  etcher's  needle  the  sky 
above,  feathered  wind  clouds,  flag  stems,  surrounding 
cliffs,  even  the  flight  of  birds  on  wing.  As  the  moun- 
tains stand  for  majesty,  the  prairies  for  infinity,  so  the 
marsh  lands  are  types  of  repose. 

But  it  is  not  a  lifeless  repose.  Barely  has  the  trap- 
per settled  himself  when  a  little  sharp  black  nose 
pokes  up  through  the  water  at  the  fore  end  of  the 
wriggling  trail.  A  round  rat-shaped  head  follows  this 
twitching  proboscis.  Then  a  brownish  earth-coloured 
body  swims  with  a  wriggling  sidelong  movement  for 
the  log,  where  roosts  the  blinking  owlet.  A  little 
noiseless  leap!  and  a  dripping  musk-rat  with  long 
flat  tail  and  webbed  feet  scrabbles  up  the  moss-cov- 
ered tree  towards  the  stupid  bird.  Another  moment, 
and  the  owl  would  have  toppled  into  the  water  with  a 
pair  of  sharp  teeth  clutched  to  its  throat.  Then  the 
man  shies  a  well-aimed  stone! 

Splash!  Flop!  The  owl  is  flapping  blindly 
through  the  flags  to  another  hiding-place,  while  the 
wriggle-wriggle  of  the  waters  tells  where  the  marsh- 
rat  has  darted  away  under  the  tangled  growth.  From 
other  idle  days  like  these,  the  trapper  has  learned  that 
musk-rats  are  not  solitary  but  always  to  be  found  in 
colonies.  Now  if  the  musk-rat  were  as  wise  as  the 
beaver  to  whom  the  Indians  say  he  is  closely  akin,  that 
16 


226  THE  STORY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

alarmed  marauder  would  carry  the  news  of  the  man- 
intruder  to  the  whole  swamp.  Perhaps  if  the  others 
remembered  from  the  prod  of  a  spear  or  the  flash  of  a 
gun  what  man's  coming  meant,  that  news  would  cause 
terrified  flight  of  every  musk-rat  from  the  marsh.  But 
musquash — little  heaver,  as  the  Indians  call  him — is 
not  so  wise,  not  so  timid,  not  so  easily  frightened  from 
his  home  as  amisk,*  the  beaver.  In  fact,  nature's  pro- 
vision for  the  musk-rat's  protection  seems  to  have  em- 
boldened the  little  rodent  almost  to  the  point  of 
stupidity.  His  skin  is  of  that  burnt  umber  shade 
hardly  to  be  distinguished  from  the  earth.  At  one 
moment  his  sharp  nose  cuts  the  water,  at  the  next  he 
is  completely  hidden  in  the  soft  clay  of  the  under- 
tangle;  and  while  you  are  straining  for  a  sight  of  him 
through  the  pool,  he  has  scurried  across  a  mud  bank 
to  his  burrow. 

Hunt  him  as  they  may,  men  and  boys  and  ragged 
squaws  wading  through  swamps  knee-high,  yet  after  a 
century  of  hunting  from  the  Chesapeake  and  the 
Hackensack  to  the  swamps  of  "  sky-coloured  water  "  on 
the  far  prairie,  little  musquash  still  yields  6,000,000 
pelts  a  year  with  never  a  sign  of  diminishing.  A  hun- 
dred years  ago,  in  1788,  so  little  was  musk-rat  held  in 
esteem  as  a  fur,  the  great  North- West  Company  of 

*  Amisk,  the  Chippewyan,  umisk,  the  Cree,  with  much  the 
same  sound.  A  well-known  trader  told  the  writer  that  he  con- 
sidered the  variation  in  Indian  language  more  a  matter  of  dialect 
than  difference  in  meaning,  and  that  while  he  could  speak  only 
Ojibway  he  never  had  any  difficulty  in  understanding  and  being 
understood  by  Cree,  Chippewyan,  and  Assiniboine.  For  instance, 
rabbit,  "the  little  white  chap,"  is  wahboos  on  the  Upper  Ottawa, 
wapus  on  the  Saskatchewan,  wapauce  on  the  MacKenzie. 


MUSQUASH  THE  MUSK-RAT  227 

Canada  sent  out  only  17,000  or  20,000  skins  a  year. 
So  rapidly  did  musk-rat  grow  in  favour  as  a  lining  and 
imitation  fur  that  in  1888  it  was  no  unusual  thing  for 
200,000  musk-rat-skins  to  be  brought  to  a  single  Hud- 
son's Bay  Company  fort.  In  Canada  the  climate  com- 
pels the  use  of  heavier  furs  than  in.  the  United  States, 
so  that  the  all-fur  coat  is  in  greater  demand  than  the 
fur-lined;  but  in  Canada,  not  less  than  2,000,000  musk- 
rat  furs  are  taken  every  year.  In  the  United  States 
the  total  is  close  on  4,000,000.  In  one  city  alone,  St. 
Paul,  50,000  musk-rat-skins  are  cured  every  year.  A 
single  stretch  of  good  marsh  ground  has  yielded  that 
number  of  skins  year  after  year  without  a  sign  of  the 
hunt  telling  on  the  prolific  little  musquash.  Multiply 
50,000  by  prices  varying  from  7  cents  to  75  cents  and 
the  value  of  the  musk-rat-hunt  becomes  apparent. 

What  is  the  secret  of  the  musk-rat's  survival  while 
the  strong  creatures  of  the  chase  like  buffalo  and  tim- 
ber-wolf have  been  almost  exterminated?  In  the  first 
place,  settlers  can't  farm  swamps;  so  the  musk-rat 
thrives  just  as  well  in  the  swamps  of  New  Jersey  to- 
day as  when  the  first  white  hunter  set  foot  in  America. 
Then  musquash  lives  as  heartily  on  owls  and  frogs  and 
snakes  as  on  water  mussels  and  lily-pads.  If  one  sort 
of  food  fails,  the  musk-rat  has  as  omnivorous  powers  of 
digestion  as  the  bear  and  changes  his  diet.  Then  he 
can  hide  as  well  in  water  as  on  land.  And  most  im- 
portant of  all,  musk-rat's  family  is  as  numerous  as  a 
cat's,  five  to  nine  rats  in  a  litter,  and  two  or  three  lit- 
ters a  year.  These  are  the  points  that  make  for  little 
musquash's  continuance  in  spite  of  all  that  shot  and 
trap  can  do. 

Having  discovered  what  the  dank  whiff,  half  ani- 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

mal,  half  vegetable,  signified,  the  trapper  sets  about 
finding  the  colony.  He  knows  there  is  no  risk  of  the 
little  still-hunter  carrying  alarm  to  the  other  musk-rats. 
If  he  waits,  it  is  altogether  probable  that  the  fleeing 
musk-rat  will  come  up  and  swim  straight  for  the  colony. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  musk-rat  may  have  scurried 
overland  through  the  rushes.  Besides,  the  trapper  ob- 
served tracks,  tiny  leaf-like  tracks  as  of  little  webbed 
feet,  over  the  soft  clay  of  the  marsh  bank.  These  will 
lead  to  the  colony,  so  the  trapper  rises  and  parting  the 
rushes  not  too  noisily,  follows  the  little  footprint  along 
the  margin  of  the  swamp. 

Here  the  track  is  lost  at  the  narrow  ford  of  an  in- 
flowing stream,  but  across  the  creek  lies  a  fallen  poplar 
littered  with — what?  The  feathers  and  bones  of  a 
dead  owlet.  Balancing  himself — how  much  better  the 
moccasins  cling  than  boots! — the  trapper  crosses  the 
log  and  takes  up  the  trail  through  the  rushes.  But 
here  musquash  has  dived  off  into  the  water  for  the  ex- 
press purpose  of  throwing  a  possible  pursuer  off  the 
scent.  But  the  tracks  betrayed  which  way  musquash 
was  travelling;  so  the  trapper  goes  on,  knowing  if  he 
does  not  find  the  little  haycock  houses  on  this  side, 
he  can  cross  to  the  other. 

Presently,  he  almost  stumbles  over  what  sent  the 
musk-rat  diving  just  at  this  place.  It  is  the  wreck  of 
a  wolverine's  ravage — a  little  wattled  dome-shaped 
house  exposed  to  that  arch-destroyer  by  the  shrinking 
of  the  swamp.  So  shallow  has  the  water  become,  that 
a  wolverine  has  easily  waded  and  leaped  clear  across 
to  the  roof  of  the  musk-rat's  house.  A  beaver-dam 
two  feet  thick  cannot  resist  the  onslaught  of  the  wol- 
verine's claws;  how  much  less  will  this  round  nest  of 


1. 


o    % 

e   * 


§i 


MUSQUASH  THE  MUSK-RAT  229 

reeds  and  grass  and  mosses  cemented  together  with 
soft  clay?  The  roof  has  been  torn  from  the  domed 
house,  leaving  the  inside  bare  and  showing  plainly  the 
domestic  economy  of  the  musk-rat  home,  smooth  round 
walls  inside,  a  floor  or  gallery  of  sticks  and  grasses, 
where  the  family  had  lived  in  an  air  chamber  above 
the  water,  rough  walls  below  the  water-line  and  two 
or  three  little  openings  that  must  have  been  safely  un- 
der water  before  the  swamp  receded.  Perhaps  a  mus- 
sel or  lily  bulb  has  been  left  in  the  deserted  larder. 
From  the  oozy  slime  below  the  mid-floor  to  the  top- 
most wall  will  not  measure  more  than  two  or  three 
feet.  If  the  swamp  had  not  dried  here,  the  stupid  lit- 
tle musk-rats  that  escaped  the  ravager's  claws  would 
probably  have  come  back  to  the  wrecked  house,  built 
up  the  torn  roof,  and  gone  on  living  in  danger  till 
another  wolverine  came.  But  a  water  doorway  the 
musk-rat  must  have.  That  he  has  learned  by  countless 
assaults  on  his  house-top,  so  when  the  marsh  retreated 
the  musk-rats  abandoned  their  house. 

All  about  the  deserted  house  are  runways,  tiny 
channels  across  oozy  peninsulas  and  islands  of  the 
musk-rat's  diminutive  world  such  as  a  very  small  beaver 
might  make.  The  trapper  jumps  across  to  a  dry 
patch  or  mound  in  the  midst  of  the  slimy  bottom  and 
prods  an  earth  bank  with  a  stick.  It  is  as  he  thought 
— hollow ;  a  musk-rat  burrow  or  gallery  in  the  clay  wall 
where  the  refugees  from  this  house  had  scuttled  from 
the  wolverine.  But  now  all  is  deserted.  The  water 
has  shrunk — that  was  the  danger  signal  to  the  musk- 
rat;  and  there  had  been  a  grand  moving  to  a  deeper 
part  of  the  swamp.  Perhaps,  after  all,  this  is  a  very 
old  house  not  used  since  last  winter. 


230  THE  STORY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

Going  back  to  the  bank,  the  trapper  skirts  through 
the  crush  of  brittle  rushes  round  the  swamp.  Coming 
sharply  on  deeper  water,  a  dank,  stagnant  bayou, 
heavy  with  the  smell  of  furry  life,  the  trapper  pushes 
aside  the  flags,  peers  out  and  sees  what  resembles  a 
prairie-dog  town  on  water — such  a  number  of  wattled 
houses  that  they  had  shut  in  the  water  as  with  a  dam. 
Too  many  flags  and  willows  lie  over  the  colony  for  a 
glimpse  of  the  tell-tale  wriggling  trail  across  the 
water;  but  from  the  wet  tangle  of  grass  and  moss  comes 
an  oozy  pattering. 

If  it  were  winter,  the  trapper  could  proceed  as  he 
would  against  a  beaver  colony,  staking  up  the  outlet 
from  the  swamp,  trenching  the  ice  round  the  different 
houses,  breaking  open  the  roofs  and  penning  up  any 
fugitives  in  their  own  bank  burrows  till  he  and  his  dog 
and  a  spear  could  clear  out  the  gallery.  But  in  win- 
ter there  is  more  important  work  than  hunting  musk- 
rat.  Musk-rat-trapping  is  for  odd  days  before  the  regu- 
lar hunt. 

Opening  the  sack  which  he  usually  carries  on  his 
back,  the  trapper  draws  out  three  dozen  small  traps 
no  larger  than  a  rat  or  mouse  trap.  Some  of  these 
he  places  across  the  runways  without  any  bait;  for  the 
musk-rat  must  pass  this  way.  Some  he  smears  with 
strong-smelling  pomatum.  Some  he  baits  with  carrot 
or  apple.  Others  he  does  not  bait  at  all,  simply  laying 
them  on  old  logs  where  he  knows  the  owlets  roost  by 
day.  But  each  of  the  traps — bait  or  no  bait — he  at- 
taches to  a  stake  driven  into  the  water  so  that  the 
prisoner  will  be  held  under  when  he  plunges  to  es- 
cape till  he  is  drowned.  Otherwise,  he  would  gnaw 
his  foot  free  of  the  trap  and  disappear  in  a  burrow. 


MUSQUASH  THE  MUSK-EAT  231 

If  the  marsh  is  large,  there  will  be  more  than  one 
musk-rat  colony.  Having  exhausted  his  traps  on  the 
first,  the  trapper  lies  in  wait  at  the  second.  When  the 
moon  comes  up  over  the  water,  there  is  a  great  splash- 
ing about  the  musk-rat  nests;  for  autumn  is  the  time 
for  house-building  and  the  musk-rats  work  at  night.  If 
the  trapper  is  an  Eastern  man,  he  will  wade  in  as  they 
do  in  New  Jersey;  but  if  he  is  a  type  of  the  Western 
hunter,  he  lies  on  the  log  among  the  rushes,  popping  a 
shot  at  every  head  that  appears  in  the  moonlit  water. 
His  dog  swims  and  dives  for  the  quarry.  By  the  time 
the  stupid  little  musk-rats  have  taken  alarm  and  hid- 
den, the  man  has  twenty  or  thirty  on  the  bank.  Go- 
ing home,  he  empties  and  resets  the  traps. 

Thirty  marten  traps  that  yield  six  martens  do  well. 
Thirty  musk-rat  traps  are  expected  to  give  thirty  musk- 
rats.  Add  to  that  the  twenty  shot,  and  what  does  the 
day's  work  represent?  Here  are  thirty  skins  of  a 
coarse  light  reddish  hair,  such  as  lines  the  poor  man's 
overcoat.  These  will  sell  for  from  7  to  15  cents  each. 
They  may  go  roughly  for  $3  at  the  fur  post.  Here  are 
ten  of  the  deeper  brown  shades,  with  long  soft  fur  that 
lines  a  lady's  cloak.  They  are  fine  enough  to  pass  for 
mink  with  a  little  dyeing,  or  imitation  seal  if  they  are 
properly  plucked.  These  will  bring  25  or  30  cents — 
say  $2.50  in  all.  But  here  are  ten  skins,  deep,  silky, 
almost  black,  for  which  a  Eussian  officer  will  pay  high 
prices,  skins  that  will  go  to  England,  and  from  Eng- 
land to  Paris,  and  from  Paris  to  St.  Petersburg  with 
accelerating  cost  mark  till  the  Kussian  grandee  is  pay- 
ing $1  or  more  for  each  pelt.  The  trapper  will  ask 
30,  40,  50  cents  for  these,  making  perhaps  $3.50  in  all. 
Then  this  idle  fellow's  day  has  totaled  up  to  $9,  not  a 


232  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

bad  day's  work,  considering  he  did  not  go  to  the  uni- 
versity for  ten  years  to  learn  his  craft,  did  not  know 
what  wear  and  tear  and  drive  meant  as  he  worked,  did 
not  spend  more  than  a  few  cents'  worth  of  shot.  But 
for  his  musk-rat-pelts  the  man  will  not  get  $9  in  coin 
unless  he  lives  very  near  the  great  fur  markets.  He 
wil  get  powder  and  clothing  and  food  and  tobacco 
whose  first  cost  has  been  increased  a  hundredfold  by 
ship  rates  and  railroad  rates,  by  keel-boat  freight  and 
pack-horse  expenses  and  portage  charges  past  count- 
less rapids.  But  he  will  get  all  that  he  needs,  all  that 
he  wants,  all  that  his  labour  is  worth,  this  "  lazy  vaga- 
bond "  who  spends  half  his  time  idling  in  the  sun.  Of 
how  many  other  men  can  that  be  said? 

But  what  of  the  ruthless  slaughter  among  the  little 
musk-rats?  Does  humanity  not  revolt  at  the  thought? 
Is  this  trapping  not  after  all  brutal  butchery? 

Animal  kindliness — if  such  a  thing  exists  among 
musk-rats — could  hardly  protest  against  the  slaughter, 
seeing  the  musk-rats  themselves  wage  as  ruthless  a  war 
against  water-worm  and  owlet  as  man  wages  against 
musk-rats.  It  is  the  old  question,  should  animal  life 
be  sacrificed  to  preserve  human  life?  To  that  ques- 
tion there  is  only  one  answer.  Linings  for  coats  are 
more  important  life-savers  than  all  the  humane  socie- 
ties of  the  world  put  together.  It  is  probable  that  the 
first  thing  the  prehistoric  man  did  to  preserve  his  own 
life  when  he  realized  himself  was  to  slay  some  destruc- 
tive animal  and  appropriate  its  coat. 


SIKAK  THE  SKUNK  233 

II 

Sikak  the  Skunk 

Sikak  the  skunk  it  is  who  supplies  the  best  imita- 
tions of  sable.  But  cleanse  the  fur  never  so  well,  on  a 
damp  day  it  still  emits  the  heavy  sickening  odour  that 
betrays  its  real  nature.  That  odour  is  sikak's  invinci- 
ble defence  against  the  white  trapper.  The  hunter 
may  follow  the  little  four-abreast  galloping  footprints 
that  lead  to  a  hole  among  stones  or  to  rotten  logs,  but 
long  before  he  has  reached  the  nesting-place  of  his 
quarry  comes  a  stench  against  which  white  blood  is 
powerless.  Or  the  trapper  may  find  an  unexpected 
visitor  in  one  of  the  pens  which  he  has  dug  for  other 
animals — a  little  black  creature  the  shape  of  a  squirrel 
and  the  size  of  a  cat  with  white  stripings  down  his 
back  and  a  bushy  tail.  It  is  then  a  case  of  a  quick 
deadly  shot,  or  the  man  will  be  put  to  rout  by  an  odour 
that  will  pollute  the  air  for  miles  around  and  drive 
him  off  that  section  of  the  hunting-field.  The  cuttle- 
fish is  the  only  other  creature  that  possesses  as  power- 
ful means  of  defence  of  a  similar  nature,  one  drop 
of  the  inky  fluid  which  it  throws  out  to  hide  it  from 
pursuers  burning  the  fisherman's  eyes  like  scalding 
acid.  As  far  as  white  trappers  are  concerned,  sikak 
is  only  taken  by  the  chance  shots  of  idle  days.  Yet 
the  Indian  hunts  the  skunk  apparently  utterly  oblivi- 
ous of  the  smell.  Traps,  poison,  deadfalls,  pens  are 
the  Indian  weapons  against  the  skunk;  and  a  Cree  will 
deliberately  skin  and  stretch  a  pelt  in  an  atmosphere 
that  is  blue  with  what  is  poison  to  the  white  man. 

The  only  case  I  ever  knew  of  white  trappers  hunt- 
ing the  skunk  was  of  three  men  on  the  North  Sas- 


234:  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

katchewan.  One  was  an  Englishman  who  had  been 
long  in  the  service  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company  and 
knew  all  the  animals  of  the  north.  The  second  was 
the  guide,  a  French-Canadian,  and  the  third  a  Sandy, 
fresh  "  f rae  oot  the  land  o'  heather."  The  men  were 
wakened  one  night  by  the  noise  of  some  animal  scram- 
bling through  the  window  into  their  cabin  and  rum- 
maging in  the  dark  among  the  provisions.  The 
Frenchman  sprang  for  a  light  and  Sandy  got  hold  of 
his  gun. 

"Losh,  mon,  it's  a  wee  bit  beastie  a'  strip't  black 
and  white  wi'  a  tail  like  a  so'dier's  cocade! " 

That  information  brought  the  Englishman  to  his 
feet  howling,  "  Don't  shoot  it!  Don't  shoot  it!  Leave 
that  thing  alone,  I  tell  you! " 

But  Sandy  being  a  true  son  of  Scotia  with  a  Pres- 
byterian love  of  argument  wished  to  debate  the  ques- 
tion. 

"An'  what  for  wu'd  a  leave  it  eating  a'  the  oat- 
meal? I'll  no  leave  it  rampagin'  th'  eatables — I  wull 
be  pokin'  it  oot! — shoo! — shoo!  " 

At  that  the  Frenchman  flung  down  the  light  and 
bolted  for  the  door,  followed  by  the  English  trader 
cursing  between  set  teeth  that  before  "that  blunder- 
ing blockhead  had  argued  the  matter"  something 
would  happen. 

Something  did  happen. 

Sandy  came  through  the  door  with  such  precipitate 
haste  that  the  topmost  beam  brought  his  head  a  mighty 
thwack,  roaring  out  at  the  top  of  his  voice  that  the 
deil  was  after  him  for  a'  the  sins  that  iver  he  had 
committed  since  he  was  born. 


WENUSK  THE  BADGER  235 

III 
Wenusk  the  Badger 

Badger,  too,  is  one  of  the  furs  taken  by  the  trap- 
per on  idle  days.  East  of  St.  Paul  and  Winnipeg,  the 
fur  is  comparatively  unknown,  or  if  known,  so  badly 
prepared  that  it  is  scarcely  recognisable  for  badger. 
This  is  probably  owing  to  differences  in  climate.  Badger 
in  its  perfect  state  is  a  long  soft  fur,  resembling  wood 
marten,  with  deep  overhairs  almost  the  length  of 
one's  hand  and  as  dark  as  marten,  with  underhairs  as 
thick  and  soft  and  yielding  as  swan's-down,  shading 
in  colour  from  fawn  to  grayish  white.  East  of  the 
Mississippi,  there  is  too  much  damp  in  the  atmosphere 
for  such  a  long  soft  fur.  Consequently  specimens  of 
badger  seen  in  the  East  must  either  be  sheared  of  the 
long  overhairs  or  left  to  mat  and  tangle  on  the  first 
rainy  day.  In  New  York,  Quebec,  Montreal,  and 
Toronto — places  where  the  finest  furs  should  be  on 
sale  if  anywhere — I  have  again  and  again  asked  for 
badger,  only  to  be  shown  a  dull  matted  short  fawnish 
fur  not  much  superior  to  cheap  dyed  furs.  It  is  not 
surprising  there  is  no  demand  for  such  a  fur  and  East- 
ern dealers  have  stopped  ordering  it.  In  the  North- 
West  the  most  common  mist  during  the  winter  is  a 
frost  mist  that  is  more  a  snow  than  a  rain,  so  there  is 
little  injury  to  furs  from  moisture.  Here  the  badger  is 
prime,  long,  thick,  and  silky,  almost  as  attractive  as 
ermine  if  only  it  were  enhanced  by  as  high  a  price. 
Whether  badger  will  ever  grow  in  favour  like  musk-rat 
or  'coon,  and  play  an  important  part  in  the  returns  of 
the  fur  exporters,  is  doubtful.  The  world  takes  its 
fashions  from  European  capitals;  and  European  capi- 


236      THE  STOEY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

tals  are  too  damp  for  badger  to  be  in  fashion  with 
them.  Certainly,  with  the  private  dealers  of  the 
North  and  West,  badger  is  yearly  becoming  more 
important. 

Like  the  musk-rat,  badger  is  prime  in  the  au- 
tumn. Wherever  the  hunting-grounds  of  the  ani- 
mals are,  there  will  the  hunting-grounds  of  the  trap- 
per be.  Badgers  run  most  where  gophers  sit  sun- 
ning themselves  on  the  clay  mounds,  ready  to  bolt 
down  to  their  subterranean  burrows  on  the  first  ap- 
proach of  an  enemy.  Eternal  enemies  these  two  are, 
gopher  and  badger,  though  they  both  live  in  ground 
holes,  nest  their  lairs  with  grasses,  run  all  summer  and 
sleep  all  winter,  and  alike  prey  on  the  creatures  smaller 
than  themselves — mice,  moles,  and  birds.  The  gopher, 
or  ground  squirrel,  is  smaller  than  the  wood  squirrel, 
while  the  badger  is  larger  than  a  Manx  cat,  with  a 
shape  that  varies  according  to  the  exigencies  of  the 
situation.  Normally,  he  is  a  flattish,  fawn-coloured 
beast,  with  a  turtle-shaped  body,  little  round  head,  and 
small  legs  with  unusually  strong  claws.  Ride  after 
the  badger  across  the  prairie  and  he  stretches  out  in 
long,  lithe  shape,  resembling  a  baby  cougar,  turning  at 
every  pace  or  two  to  snap  at  your  horse,  then  off  again 
at  a  hulking  scramble  of  astonishing  speed.  Pour 
water  down  his  burrow  to  compel  him  to  come  up  or 
down,  and  he  swells  out  his  body,  completely  filling 
the  passage,  so  that  his  head,  which  is  downward,  is  in 
dry  air,  while  his  hind  quarters  alone  are  in  the  water. 
In  captivity  the  badger  is  a  business-like  little  body, 
with  very  sharp  teeth,  of  which  his  keeper  must  beware, 
and  some  of  the  tricks  of  the  skunk,  but  inclined,  on' 
the  whole,  to  mind  his  affairs  if  you  will  mind  yours. 


WENUSK  THE  BADGER  237 

Once  a  day  regularly  every  afternoon  out  of  his  lair 
he  emerges  for  the  most  comical  sorts  of  athletic  ex- 
ercises. Hour  after  hour  he  will  trot  diagonally — be- 
cause that  gives  him  the  longest  run — from  corner  to 
corner  of  his  pen,  rearing  up  on  his  hind  legs  as  he 
reaches  one  corner,  rubbing  the  back  of  his  head,  then 
down  again  and  across  to  the  other  corner,  where  he 
repeats  the  performance.  There  can  be  no  reason  for 
the  badger  doing  this,  unless  it  was  his  habit  in  the 
wilds  when  he  trotted  about  leaving  dumb  signs  on 
mud  banks  and  brushwood  by  which  others  of  his  kind 
might  know  where  to  find  him  at  stated  times. 

Sunset  is  the  time  when  he  is  almost  sure  to  be 
among  the  gopher  burrows.  In  vain  the  saucy  jay 
shrieks  out  a  warning  to  the  gophers.  Of  all  the 
prairie  creatures,  they  are  the  stupidest,  the  most  beset 
with  curiosity  to  know  what  that  jay's  shriek  may 
mean.  Sunning  themselves  in  the  last  rays  of  daylight, 
the  gophers  perch  on  their  hind  legs  to  wait  develop- 
ments of  what  the  jay  announced.  But  the  badger's 
fur  and  the  gopher  mounds  are  almost  the  same  colour. 
He  has  pounced  on  some  playful  youngsters  before  the 
rest  see  him.  Then  there  is  a  wild  scuttling  down  to 
the  depths  of  the  burrows.  That,  too,  is  vain;  for  the 
badger  begins  ripping  up  the  clay  bank  like  a  grisly, 
down — down — in  pursuit,  two,  three,  five  feet,  even 
twelve. 

Then  is  seen  one  of  the  most  curious  freaks  in  all 
the  animal  life  of  the  prairie.  The  underground  gal- 
Aeries  of  the  gophers  connect  and  lead  up  to  different 
exits.  As  the  furious  badger  comes  closer  and  closer 
on  the  cowering  gophers,  the  little  cowards  lose  heart, 
dart  up  the  galleries  to  open  doors,  and  try  to  escape 


238  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

through  the  grass  of  the  prairie.  But  no  sooner  is  the 
badger  hard  at  work  than  a  gray  form  seems  to  rise 
out  of  the  earth,  a  coyote  who  had  been  slinking  to 
the  rear  all  the  while;  and  as  the  terrified  gophers 
scurry  here,  scurry  there,  coyote's  white  teeth  snap! — 
snap !  He  is  here — there — everywhere — pouncing — 
jumping — having  the  fun  of  his  life,  gobbling  gophers 
as  cats  catch  mice.  Down  in  the  bottom  of  the  burrow, 
the  badger  may  get  half  a  dozen  poor  cooped  huddling 
prisoners;  but  the  coyote  up  on  the  prairie  has  de- 
voured a  whole  colony. 

Do  these  two,  badger  and  coyote,  consciously  hunt 
together?  Some  old  trappers  vow  they  do — others  just 
as  vehemently  that  they  don't.  The  fact  remains  that 
wherever  the  badger  goes  gopher-hunting  on  an  un- 
settled prairie,  there  the  coyote  skulks  reaping  reward 
of  all  the  badger's  work.  The  coincidence  is  no 
stranger  than  the  well-known  fact  that  sword-fish  and 
thrasher — two  different  fish — always  league  together  to 
attack  the  whale. 

One  thing  only  can  save  the  gopher  colony,  and 
that  is  the  gun  barrel  across  yon  earth  mound  where  a 
trapper  lies  in  wait  for  the  coming  of  the  badger. 

IV 
The  'Coon 

Sir  Alexander  MacKenzie  reported  that  in  1798 
the  North-West  Company  sent  out  only  100  raccoon 
from  the  fur  country.  Last  year  the  city  of  St.  Paul 
alone  cured  115,000  'coon-skins.  What  brought  about 
the  change?  Simply  an  appreciation  of  the  qualities 
of  'coon,  which  combines  the  greatest  warmth  with 


THE  'COON  239 

the  lightest  weight  and  is  especially  adapted  for  a 
cold  climate  and  constant  wear.  What  was  said  of 
badger  applies  with  greater  force  to  'coon.  The 
'coon  in  the  East  is  associated  in  one's  mind  with 
cabbies,  in  the  West  with  fashionably  dressed  men 
and  women.  And  there  is  just  as  wide  a  difference 
in  the  quality  of  the  fur  as  in  the  quality  of  the 
people.  The  cabbies'  'coon  coat  is  a  rough  yellow 
fur  with  red  stripes.  The  Westerner's  'coon  is  a  silky 
brown  fur  with  black  stripes.  One  represents  the  fall 
hunt  of  men  and  boys  round  hollow  logs,  the  other  the 
midwinter  hunt  of  a  professional  trapper  in  the  Far 
North.  A  dog  usually  bays  the  'coon  out  of  hiding  in 
the  East.  Tiny  tracks,  like  a  child's  hand,  tell  the 
Northern  hunter  where  to  set  his  traps. 

Wahboos  the  rabbit,  musquash  the  musk-rat,  sikak 
the  skunk,  wenusk  the  badger,  and  the  common  'coon — 
these  are  the  little  chaps  whose  hunt  fills  the  idle  days 
of  the  trapper's  busy  life.  At  night,  before  the  rough 
stone  hearth  which  he  has  built  in  his  cabin,  he  is 
still  busy  by  fire-light  preparing  their  pelts.  Each 
skin  must  be  stretched  and  cured.  Turning  the  skin 
fur  side  in,  the  trapper  pushes  into  the  pelt  a  wedge- 
shaped  slab  of  spliced  cedar.  Into  the  splice  he  shoves 
another  wedge  of  wood  which  he  hammers  in,  each 
blow  widening  the  space  and  stretching  the  skin.  All 
pelts  are  stretched  fur  in  but  the  fox.  Tacking  the 
stretched  skin  on  a  flat  board,  the  trapper  hangs  it  to 
dry  till  he  carries  all  to  the  fort;  unless,  indeed,  he 
should  need  a  garment  for  himself — cap,  coat,  or 
gantlets — in  which  case  he  takes  out  a  square  needle 
and  passes  his  evenings  like  a  tailor,  sewing. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

THE  BABE  FUBS — HOTV  THE  TBAPPEB  TAKES  SAKWA- 
SEW  THE  MIJfK,  NEKIK  THE  OTTEB,  WUCHAK  THE 
FISHEB,  AND  WAPISTAN  THE  MABTEtf 


Sakwasew  the  Mink 

THEBE  are  other  little  chaps  with  more  valuable 
fur  than  musquash,  whose  skin  seldom  attains  higher 
honour  than  inside  linings,  and  wahboos,  whose  snowy 
coat  is  put  to  the  indignity  of  imitating  ermine  with  a 
dotting  of  black  cat  for  the  ermine's  jet  tip.  There 
are  mink  and  otter  and  fisher  and  fox  and  ermine 
and  sable,  all  little  fellows  with  pelts  worth  their 
weight  in  coin  of  the  realm. 

On  one  of  those  idle  days  when  the  trapper  seems 
to  be  doing  nothing  but  lying  on  his  back  in  the  sun, 
he  has  witnessed  a  curious,  but  common,  battle  in 
pantomine  between  bird  and  beast.  A  prairie-hawk 
circles  and  drops,  lifts  and  wheels  again  with  monot- 
onous silent  persistence  above  the  swamp.  What 
quarry  does  he  seek,  this  lawless  forager  of  the  upper 
airs  still  hunting  a  hidden  nook  of  the  low  prairie? 
If  he  were  out  purely  for  exercise,  like  the  little  badger 
when  it  goes  rubbing  the  back  of  its  head  from  post  to 
post,  there  would  be  a  buzzing  of  wings  and  shrill 
lonely  callings  to  an  unseen  mate. 
240 


SAKWASEW  THE  MINK  241 

But  the  circling  hawk  is  as  silent  as  the  very  per- 
sonification of  death.  Apparently  he  can't  make  up 
his  mind  for  the  death-drop  on  some  rat  or  frog  down 
there  in  the  swamp.  The  trapper  notices  that  the 
hawk  keeps  circling  directly  above  the  place  where  the 
waters  of  the  swamp  tumble  from  the  ravine  in  a  small 
cataract  to  join  a  lower  river.  He  knows,  too,  from 
the  rich  orange  of  the  plumage  that  the  hawk  is  young. 
An  older  fellow  would  not  be  advertising  his  inten- 
tions in  this  fashion.  Besides,  an  older  hawk  would 
have  russet-gray  feathering.  Is  the  rascally  young 
hawk  meditating  a  clutch  of  talons  round  some  of 
the  unsuspecting  trout  that  usually  frequent  the 
quiet  pools  below  a  waterfall.  Or  does  he  aim  at 
bigger  game  ?  A  young  hawk  is  bold  with  the  courage 
that  has  not  yet  learned  the  wisdom  of  caution.  That 
is  why  there  are  so  many  more  of  the  brilliant  young 
red  hawks  in  our  museums  than  old  grizzled  gray  vet- 
erans whose  craft  circumvents  the  specimen  hunter's 
cunning.  Now  the  trapper  comes  to  have  as  keen  a 
sense  of  feel  for  all  the  creatures  of  the  wilds  as  the 
creatures  of  the  wilds  have  for  man;  so  he  shifts 
his  position  that  he  may  find  what  is  attracting  the 
hawk. 

Down  on  the  pebbled  beach  below  the  waterfalls  lies 
an  auburn  bundle  of  fur,  about  the  size  of  a  very  long, 
slim,  short-legged  cat,  still  as  a  stone — some  member 
of  the  weasel  family  gorged  torpid  with  fish,  stretched 
out  full  length  to  sleep  in  the  sun.  To  sleep,  ah,  yes, 
and  as  the  Danish  prince  said,  "  perchance  to  dream  " ; 
for  all  the  little  fellows  of  river  and  prairie  take  good 
care  never  to  sleep  where  they  are  exposed  to  their 
countless  enemies.  This  sleep  of  the  weasel  arouses  the 
17 


242      THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

man's  suspicion.  The  trapper  draws  out  his  field-glass. 
The  sleeper  is  a  mink,  and  its  sleep  is  a  sham  with 
beady,  red  eyes  blinking  a  deal  too  lively  for  real 
death.  Why  does  it  lie  on  its  back  rigid  and  straight 
as  if  it  were  dead  with  all  four  tiny  paws  clutched  out 
stiff?  The  trapper  scans  the  surface  of  the  swamp  to 
see  if  some  foolish  musk-rat  is  swimming  dangerously 
near  the  sleeping  mink. 

Presently  the  hawk  circles  lower — lower! — Drop 
straight  as  a  stone!  Its  talons  are  almost  in  the  mink's 
body,  when  of  a  sudden  the  sleeper  awakens — awakens 
— with  a  leap  of  the  four  stiff  little  feet  and  a  darting 
spear-thrust  of  snapping  teeth  deep  in  the  neck  of  the 
hawk!  At  first  the  hawk  rises  tearing  furiously  at  the 
clinging  mink  with  its  claws.  The  wings  sag.  Down 
bird  and  beast  fall.  Over  they  roll  on  the  sandy 
beach,  hawk  and  mink,  over  and  over  with  a  thrashing 
of  the  hawk's  wings  to  beat  the  treacherous  little 
vampire  off.  Now  the  blood-sucker  is  on  top  clutch- 
ing— clutching!  Now  the  bird  flounders  up  craning 
his  neck  from  the  death-grip.  Then  the  hawk  falls  on 
his  back.  His  wings  are  prone.  They  cease  to  flutter. 

Kunning  to  the  bank  the  trapper  is  surprised  to  see 
the  little  blood-sucker  making  off  with  the  prey  instead 
of  deserting  it  as  all  creatures  akin  to  the  weasel  family 
usually  do.  That  means  a  family  of  mink  somewhere 
near,  to  be  given  their  first  lesson  in  bird-hunting,  in 
mink-hawking  by  the  body  of  this  poor,  dead,  foolish 
gyrfalcon. 

By  a  red  mark  here,  by  a  feather  there,  crushed 
grass  as  of  something  dragged,  a  little  webbed  foot- 
print on  the  wet  clay,  a  tiny  marking  of  double  dots 
where  the  feet  have  crossed  a  dry  stone,  the  trapper 


SAKWASEW  THE  MINK  243 

slowly  takes  up  the  trail  of  the  mink.  Mink  are  not 
prime  till  the  late  fall.  Then  the  reddish  fur  assumes 
the  shades  of  the  russet  grasses  where  they  run  until 
the  white  of  winter  covers  the  land.  Then — as  if 
nature  were  to  exact  avengement  for  all  the  red 
slaughter  the  mink  has  wrought  during  the  rest  of  the 
year — his  coat  becomes  dark  brown,  almost  black,  the 
very  shade  that  renders  him  most  conspicuous  above 
snow  to  all  the  enemies  of  the  mink  world.  But  while 
the  trapper  has  no  intention  of  destroying  what  would 
be  worthless  now  but  will  be  valuable  in  the  winter,  it 
is  not  every  day  that  even  a  trapper  has  a  chance  to 
trail  a  mink  back  to  its  nest  and  see  the  young  family. 
But  suddenly  the  trail  stops.  Here  is  a  sandy 
patch  with  some  tumbled  stones  under  a  tangle  of 
grasses  and  a  rivulet  not  a  foot  away.  Ah — there  it 
is — a  nest  or  lair,  a  tiny  hole  almost  hidden  by  the 
rushes!  But  the  nest  seems  empty.  Fast  as  the 
trapper  has  come,  the  mink  came  faster  and  hid  her 
family.  To  one  side,  the  hawk  had  been  dropped 
among  the  rushes.  The  man  pokes  a  stick  in  the  lair 
but  finds  nothing.  Putting  in  his  hand,  he  is  dragging 
out  bones,  feathers,  skeleton  musk-rats,  putrid  frogs, 
promiscuous  remnants  of  other  quarries  brought  to  the 
burrow  by  the  mink,  when  a  little  cattish  s-p-i-t! 
almost  touches  his  hand.  His  palm  closes  over  some- 
thing warm,  squirming,  smaller  than  a  kitten  with 
very  downy  fur,  on  a  soft  mouse-like  skin,  eyes  that 
are  still  blind  and  a  tiny  mouth  that  neither  meows 
nor  squeaks,  just  spits! — spits! — spits! — in  impotent 
viperish  fury.  All  the  other  minklets,  the  mother  had 
succeeded  in  hiding  under  the  grasses,  but  somehow 
this  one  had  been  left.  Will  he  take  it  home  and  try 


THE  STORY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

the  experiment  of  rearing  a  young  mink  with  a  family 
of  kittens? 

The  trapper  calls  to  mind  other  experiments. 
There  was  the  little  beaver  that  chewed  up  his  canoe 
and  gnawed  a  hole  of  escape  through  the  door.  There 
were  the  three  little  bob-cats  left  in  the  woods  behind 
his  cabin  last  year  when  he  refrained  from  setting  out 
traps  and  tied  up  his  dog  to  see  if  he  could  not  catch 
the  whole  family,  mother  and  kittens,  for  an  Eastern 
museum.  Furtively  at  first,  the  mother  had  come  to 
feed  her  kittens.  Then  the  man  had  put  out  rugs  to 
keep  the  kittens  warm  and  lain  in  wait  for  the  mother; 
but  no  sooner  did  she  see  her  offspring  comfortably 
cared  for,  than  she  deserted  them  entirely,  evidently 
acting  on  the  proverb  that  the  most  gracious  enemy  is 
the  most  dangerous,  or  else  deciding  that  the  kits  were 
so  well  off  that  she  was  not  needed.  Adopting  the 
three  little  wild-cats,  the  trapper  had  reared  them  past 
blind-eyes,  past  colic  and  dumps  and  all  the  youthful 
ills  to  which  live  kittens  are  heirs,  when  trouble  began. 
The  longing  for  the  wilds  came.  Even  catnip  green 
and  senna  tea  boiled  can't  cure  that.  So  keenly  did  the 
gipsy  longing  come  to  one  little  bob  that  he  perished 
escaping  to  the  woods  by  way  of  the  chimney  flue.  The 
second  little  bob  succeeded  in  escaping  through  a 
parchment  stop-gap  that  served  the  trapper  as  a 
window.  And  the  third  bobby  dealt  such  an  ill-tem- 
pered gash  to  the  dog's  nose  that  the  combat  ended 
in  instant  death  for  the  cat. 

Thinking  over  these  experiments,  the  trapper  wisely 
puts  the  mink  back  in  the  nest  with  words  which  it 
would  have  been  well  for  that  litle  ball  of  down  to  have 
understood.  He  told  it  he  would  come  back  for  it  next 


SAKWASEW  THE  MINK  245 

winter  and  to  be  sure  to  have  its  best  black  coat  on. 
For  the  little  first-year  minks  wear  dark  coats,  almost 
as  fine  as  Russian  sable.  Yes — he  reflects,  poking  it 
back  to  the  hole  and  retreating  quickly  so  that  the 
mother  will  return — better  leave  it  till  the  winter;  for 
wasn't  it  Koot  who  put  a  mink  among  his  kittens,  only 
to  have  the  little  viper  set  on  them  with  tooth  and 
claw  as  soon  as  its  eyes  opened?  Also  mink  are  bad 
neighbours  to  a  poultry-yard.  Forty  chickens  in  a  sin- 
gle night  will  the  little  mink  destroy,  not  for  food  but 
— to  quote  man's  words — for  the  zest  of  the  sport.  The 
mink,  you  must  remember,  like  other  pot-hunters,  can 
boast  of  a  big  bag. 

The  trapper  did  come  back  next  fall.  It  was  when 
he  was  ranging  all  the  swamp-lands  for  beaver-dams. 
Swamp  lands  often  mean  beaver-dams;  and  trappers 
always  note  what  stops  the  current  of  a  sluggish 
stream.  Frequently  it  is  a  beaver  colony  built  across 
a  valley  in  the  mountains,  or  stopping  up  the  outlet  of 
a  slough.  The  trapper  was  sleeping  under  his  canoe 
on  the  banks  of  the  river  where  the  swamp  tumbled 
out  from  the  ravine.  Before  retiring  to  what  was  a 
boat  by  day  and  a  bed  by  night,  he  had  set  out  a  fish 
net  and  some  loose  lines — which  the  flow  of  the  cur- 
rent would  keep  in  motion — below  the  waterfall.  Care- 
lessly, next  day,  he  threw  the  fish-heads  among  the 
stones.  The  second  morning  he  found  such  a  multi- 
tude of  little  tracks  dotting  the  rime  of  the  hoar  frost 
that  he  erected  a  tent  back  from  the  waterfalls,  and 
decided  to  stay  trapping  there  till  the  winter.  The 
fish-heads  were  no  longer  thrown  away.  They  were 
left  among  the  stones  in  small  steel-traps  weighted 
with  other  stones,  or  attached  to  a  loose  stick  that 


246  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TEAPPER 

would  impede  flight.  And  if  the  poor  gyrfalcon  could 
have  seen  the  mink  held  by  the  jaws  of  a  steel-trap, 
hissing,  snarling,  breaking  its  teeth  on  the  iron,  spit- 
ting out  all  the  rage  of  its  wicked  nature,  the  bird 
would  have  been  avenged. 

And  as  winter  deepened,  the  quality  of  minks 
taken  from  the  traps  became  darker,  silkier,  crisper, 
almost  brown  black  in  some  of  the  young,  but  for 
light  fur  on  the  under  lip.  The  Indians  say  that 
sakwasew  the  mink  would  sell  his  family  for  a  fish, 
and  as  long  as  fish  lay  among  the  stones,  the  trapper 
gathered  his  harvest  of  fur:  reddish  mink  that  would 
be  made  into  little  neck  ruffs  and  collar  pieces,  reddish 
brown  mink  that  would  be  sewed  into  costly  coats  and 
cloaks,  rare  brownish  black  mink  that  would  be  put 
into  the  beautiful  flat  scarf  collars  almost  as  costly  as 
a  full  coat.  And  so  the  mink-hunt  went  on  merrily 
for  the  man  till  the  midwinter  lull  came  at  Christmas. 
For  that  year  the  mink-hunt  was  over. 

II 
Nekik  the  Otter 

Sakwasew  was  not  the  only  fisher  at  the  pool  below 
the  falls.  On  one  of  those  idle  days  when  the  trapper 
sat  lazily  by  the  river  side,  a  round  head  slightly  sun- 
burned from  black  to  russet  had  hobbled  up  to  the  sur- 
face of  the  water,  peered  sharply  at  the  man  sitting  so 
still,  paddled  little  flipper-like  feet  about,  then  ducked 
down  again.  Motionless  as  the  mossed  log  under  him 
sits  the  man;  and  in  a  moment  up  comes  the  little  black 
head  again,  round  as  a  golf  ball,  about  the  size  of  a 
very  large  cat,  followed  by  three  other  little  bobbing 


NEKIK  THE  OTTER  247 

heads — a  mother  otter  teaching  her  babies  to  dive  and 
swim  and  duck  from  the  river  surface  to  the  burrows 
below  the  water  along  the  river  bank.  Perhaps  the 
trapper  has  found  a  dead  fish  along  this  very  bank  with 
only  the  choice  portions  of  the  body  eaten — a  sure  sign 
that  nekik  the  otter,  the  little  epicure  of  the  water 
world,  has  been  fishing  at  this  river. 

With  a  scarcely  perceptible  motion,  the  man  turns 
his  head  to  watch  the  swimmers.  Instantly,  down  they 
plunge,  mother  and  babies,  to  come  to  the  surface 
again  higher  up-stream,  evidently  working  up-current 
like  the  beaver  in  spring  for  a  glorious  frolic  in  the 
cold  clear  waters  of  the  upper  sources.  At  one  place 
on  the  sandy  beach  they  all  wade  ashore.  The  man 
utters  a  slight  "Hiss!"  Away  they  scamper,  the 
foolish  youngsters,  landward  instead  of  to  the  safe 
water  as  the  hesitating  mother  would  have  them  do, 
all  the  little  feet  scrambling  over  the  sand  with  the 
funny  short  steps  of  a  Chinese  lady  in  tight  boots. 
Maternal  care  proves  stronger  than  fear.  The  fright- 
ened mother  follows  the  young  otter  and  will  no  doubt 
read  them  a  sound  lecture  on  land  dangers  when  she 
has  rounded  them  back  to  the  safe  water  higher  up- 
stream. 

Of  all  wild  creatures,  none  is  so  crafty  in  conceal- 
ing its  lairs  as  the  otter.  Where  did  this  family  come 
from?  They  had  not  been  swimming  up-stream;  for 
the  man  had  been  watching  on  the  river  bank  long  be- 
fore they  appeared  on  the  surface.  Stripping,  the 
trapper  dives  in  mid-stream,  then  half  wades,  half 
swims  along  the  steepest  bank,  running  his  arm  against 
the  clay  cliff  to  find  a  burrow.  On  land  he  could  not  do 
this  at  the  lair  of  the  otter;  for  the  smell  of  the 


24:8  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

man-touch  would  be  left  on  his  trail,  and  the  otter, 
keener  of  scent  and  fear  than  the  mink,  would  take 
alarm.  But  for  the  same  reason  that  the  river  is  the 
safest  refuge  for  the  otter,  it  is  the  surest  hunt- 
ing for  the  man — water  does  not  keep  the  scent  of 
a  trail.  So  the  man  runs  his  arm  along  the  hank.  The 
river  is  the  surest  hunting  for  the  man,  but  not  the 
safest.  If  an  old  male  were  in  the  bank  burrow  now, 
or  happened  to  be  emerging  from  grass-lined  subter- 
ranean air  chambers  above  the  bank  gallery,  it  might 
be  serious  enough  for  the  exploring  trapper.  One  bite 
of  nekik  the  otter  has  crippled  many  an  Indian. 
Knowing  from  the  remnants  of  half-eaten  fish  and 
from  the  holes  in  the  bank  that  he  has  found  an  otter 
runway,  the  man  goes  home  as  well  satisfied  as  if  he 
had  done  a  good  day's  work. 

And  so  that  winter  when  he  had  camped  below  the 
swamp  for  the  mink-hunt,  the  trapper  was  not  sur- 
prised one  morning  to  find  a  half-eaten  fish  on  the 
river  bank.  Sakwasew  the  mink  takes  good  care  to 
leave  no  remnants  of  his  greedy  meal.  What  he  can- 
not eat  he  caches.  Even  if  he  has  strangled  a  dozen 
water-rats  in  one  hunt,  they  will  be  dragged  in  a  heap 
and  covered.  The  half-eaten  fish  left  exposed  is  not 
mink's  work.  Otter  has  been  here  and  otter  will  come 
back;  for  as  the  frost  hardens,  only  those  pools  below 
the  falls  keep  free  from  ice.  No  use  setting  traps  with 
fish-heads  as  long  as  fresh  fish  are  to  be  had  for  the 
taking.  Besides,  the  man  has  done  nothing  to  conceal 
his  tracks;  and  each  morning  the  half -eaten  fish  lie 
farther  off  the  line  of  the  man-trail. 

By-and-bye  the  man  notices  that  no  more  half-eaten 
fish  are  on  his  side  of  the  river.  Little  tracks  of 


NEKIK  THE  OTTER  249 

webbed  feet  furrowing  a  deep  rut  in  the  soft  snow  of 
the  frozen  river  tell  that  nekik  has  taken  alarm  and 
is  fishing  from  the  other  side.  And  when  Christmas 
comes  with  a  dwindling  of  the  mink-hunt,  the  man, 
too,  crosses  to  the  other  side.  Here  he  finds  that  the 
otter  tracks  have  worn  a  path  that  is  almost  a  tobog- 
gan slide  down  the  crusted  snow  bank  to  the  iced  edge 
of  the  pool.  By  this  time  nekik's  pelt  is  prime,  almost 
black,  and  as  glossy  as  floss.  By  this  time,  too,  the 
fish  are  scarce  and  the  epicure  has  become  ravenous  as 
a  pauper.  One  night  when  the  trapper  was  recon- 
noitring the  fish  hole,  he  had  approached  the  snow 
bank  so  noiselessly  that  he  came  on  a  whole  colony  of 
otters  without  their  knowledge  of  his  presence.  Down 
the  snow  bank  they  tumbled,  head-first,  tail-first, 
slithering  through  the  snow  with  their  little  paws 
braced,  rolling  down  on  their  backs  like  lads  upset  from 
a  toboggan,  otter  after  otter,  till  the  man  learned  that 
the  little  beasts  were  not  fishing  at  all,  but  coasting 
the  snow  bank  like  youngsters  on  a  night  frolic.  No 
sooner  did  one  reach  the  bottom  than  up  he  scampered 
to  repeat  the  fun;  and  sometimes  two  or  three  went 
down  in  a  rolling  bunch  mixed  up  at  the  foot  of  a  slide 
as  badly  as  a  couple  of  toboggans  that  were  unpre- 
meditatedly  changing  their  occupants.  Bears  wrestle. 
The  kittens  of  all  the  cat  tribe  play  hide  and  seek. 
Little  badger  finds  it  fun  to  run  round  rubbing  the 
back  of  his  head  on  things;  and  here  was  nekik  the 
otter  at  the  favourite  amusement  of  his  kind — coasting 
down  a  snow  bank. 

If  the  trapper  were  an  Indian,  he  would  lie  in  wait 
at  the  landing-place  and  spear  the  otter  as  they  came 
from  the  water.  But  the  white  man's  craft  is  deeper. 


250  THE  STORY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

He  does  not  wish  to  frighten  the  otter  till  the  last  has 
been  taken.  Coming  to  the  slide  by  day,  he  baits  a  steel- 
trap  with  fish  and  buries  it  in  the  snow  just  where  the 
otter  will  be  coming  down  the  hill  or  up  from  the  pool. 
Perhaps  he  places  a  dozen  such  traps  around  the  hole 
with  nothing  visible  but  the  frozen  fish  lying  on  the 
surface.  If  he  sets  his  traps  during  a  snow-fall,  so 
much  the  better.  His  own  tracks  will  be  obliterated 
and  the  otter's  nose  will  discover  the  fish.  Then  he 
takes  a  bag  filled  with  some  substance  of  animal  odour, 
pomatum,  fresh  meat,  pork,  or  he  may  use  the  flesh 
side  of  a  fresh  deer-hide.  This  he  drags  over  the  snow 
where  he  has  stepped.  He  may  even  use  a  fresh  hide 
to  handle  the  traps,  as  a  waiter  uses  a  serviette  to  pass 
plates.  There  must  be  no  man-smell,  no  man-track 
near  the  otter  traps. 

While  the  mink-hunt  is  fairly  over  by  midwinter, 
otter-trapping  lasts  from  October  to  May.  The  value 
of  all  rare  furs,  mink,  otter,  marten,  ermine,  varies  with 
two  things:  (1)  the  latitude  of  the  hunting-field;  (2) 
the  season  of  the  hunt.  For  instance,  ask  a  trapper  of 
Minnesota  or  Lake  Superior  what  he  thinks  of  the 
ermine,  and  he  will  tell  you  that  it  is  a  miserable  sort 
of  weasel  of  a  dirty  drab  brown  not  worth  twenty-five 
cents  a  skin.  Ask  a  trapper  of  the  North  Saskatche- 
wan what  he  thinks  of  ermine;  and  he  will  tell  you 
it  is  a  pretty  little  whitish  creature  good  for  fur  if 
trapped  late  enough  in  the  winter  and  always  useful  as 
a  lining.  But  ask  a  trapper  of  the  Arctic  about  the 
ermine,  and  he  describes  it  as  the  finest  fur  that  is 
taken  except  the  silver  fox,  white  and  soft  as  swan's- 
down,  with  a  tail-tip  like  black  onyx.  This  difference 
in  the  fur  of  the  animal  explains  the  wide  variety  of 


Fur  press  in  use 
at  Fort  Good 
Hope,  at  the 
extreme  north 
of  Hudson's 
Bay  Company's 
territory. 


Old  wedge  press 
in  use  at  Fort 
Resolution,  of 
the  sub  -  Arc- 
tics. 


Types  of  Fur  Presses. 


WUCHAK  THE  FISHER,  OR  PEKAN  251 

prices  paid.  Ermine  not  worth  twenty-five  cents  in 
Wisconsin  might  be  worth  ten  times  as  much  on  the 
Saskatchewan. 

So  it  is  with  the  otter.  All  trapped  between  lati- 
tude thirty-five  and  sixty  is  good  fur;  and  the  best  is 
that  taken  toward  the  end  of  winter  when  scarcely  a 
russet  hair  should  be  found  in  the  long  over-fur  of 
nekik's  coat. 

HI 
WuchaJc  the  Fisher,  or  Pekan 

Wherever  the  waste  of  fish  or  deer  is  thrown,  there 
will  be  found  lines  of  double  tracks  not  so  large  as  the 
wild-cat's,  not  so  small  as  the  otter's,  and  without  the 
same  webbing  as  the  mink's.  This  is  wuchak  the 
fisher,  or  pekan,  commonly  called  "  the  black  cat " — 
who,  in  spite  of  his  fishy  name,  hates  water  as  cats 
hate  it.  And  the  tracks  are  double  because  pekan 
travel  in  pairs.  He  is  found  along  the  banks  of 
streams  because  he  preys  on  fish  and  fisher,  on  mink 
and  otter  and  musk-rat,  on  frogs  and  birds  and 
creatures  that  come  to  drink.  He  is,  after  all,  a  very 
greedy  fellow,  not  at  all  particular  about  his  diet,  and, 
like  all  gluttons,  easily  snared.  While  mink  and  otter 
are  about,  the  trapper  will  waste  no  steel-traps  on 
pekan.  A  deadfall  will  act  just  as  effectively;  but 
there  is  one  point  requiring  care.  Pekan  has  a  sharp 
nose.  It  is  his  nose  that  brings  him  to  all  carrion  just 
as  surely  as  hawks  come  to  pick  dead  bones.  But  that 
same  nose  will  tell  him  of  man's  presence.  So  when 
the  trapper  has  built  his  pen  of  logs  so  that  the  front 
log  or  deadfall  will  crush  down  on  the  back  of  an  in- 
truder tugging  at  the  bait  inside,  he  overlays  all  with 


252      THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

leaves  and  brush  to  quiet  the  pekan's  suspicions.  Be- 
sides, the  pekan  has  many  tricks  akin  to  the  wolverine. 
He  is  an  inveterate  thief.  There  is  a  well-known  in- 
stance of  Hudson's  Bay  trappers  having  a  line  of  one 
hundred  and  fifty  marten  traps  stretching  for  fifty 
miles  robbed  of  their  bait  by  pekan.  The  men  short- 
ened the  line  to  thirty  miles  and  for  six  times  in  suc- 
cession did  pekan  destroy  the  traps.  Then  the  men  set 
themselves  to  trap  the  robber.  He  will  rifle  a  deadfall 
from  the  slanting  back  roof  where  there  is  no  danger; 
so  the  trapper  overlays  the  back  with  heavy  brush. 

Pekan  do  not  yield  a  rare  fur;  but  they  are  always 
at  run  where  the  trapper  is  hunting  the  rare  furs,  and 
for  that  reason  are  usually  snared  at  the  same  time  as 
mink  and  otter. 

IV 
Wapistan  the  Marten 

When  Koot  went  blind  on  his  way  home  from  the 
rabbit-hunt,  he  had  intended  to  set  out  for  the  pine 
woods.  Though  blizzards  still  howl  over  the  prairie, 
by  March  the  warm  sun  of  midday  has  set  the  sap  of 
the  forests  stirring  and  all  the  woodland  life  awakens 
from  its  long  winter  sleep.  Cougar  and  lynx  and  bear 
rove  through  the  forest  ravenous  with  spring  hunger. 
Otter,  too,  may  be  found  where  the  ice  mounds  of  a 
waterfall  are  beginning  to  thaw.  But  it  is  not  any  of 
these  that  the  trapper  seeks.  If  they  cross  his  path, 
good — they,  too,  will  swell  his  account  at  the  fur  post. 
It  is  another  of  the  little  chaps  that  he  seeks,  a  little, 
long,  low-set  animal  whose  fur  is  now  glistening  bright 
on  the  deep  dark  overhairs,  soft  as  down  in  the  thick 
fawn  underhairs,  wapistan  the  marten. 


WAPISTAN  THE  MARTEN  253 

When  the  forest  begins  to  stir  with  the  coming  of 
spring,  wapistan  stirs  too,  crawling  out  fom  the  hollow 
of  some  rotten  pine  log,  restless  with  the  same  blood- 
thirst  that  set  the  little  mink  playing  his  tricks  on  the 
hawk.  And  yet  the  marten  is  not  such  a  little  viper  as 
the  mink.  "Wapistan  will  eat  leaves  and  nuts  and  roots 
if  he  can  get  vegetable  food,  but  failing  these,  that 
ravenous  spring  hunger  of  his  must  be  appeased  with 
something  else.  And  out  he  goes  from  his  log  hole 
hunger-bold  as  the  biggest  of  all  other  spring  ravagers. 
That  boldness  gives  the  trapper  his  chance  at  the  very 
time  when  wapistan's  fur  is  best.  All  winter  the  trap- 
per may  have  taken  marten;  but  the  end  of  winter  is 
the  time  when  wapistan  wanders  freely  from  cover. 
Thus  the  trapper's  calendar  would  have  months  of 
musk-rat  first,  then  beaver  and  mink  and  pekan  and 
bear  and  fox  and  ermine  and  rabbit  and  lynx  and 
marten,  with  a  long  idle  midsummer  space  when  he 
goes  to  the  fort  for  the  year's  provisions  and  gathers 
the  lore  of  his  craft. 

Wapistan  is  not  hard  to  track.  Being  much  longer 
and  heavier  than  a  cat  with  very  short  legs  and  small 
feet,  his  body  almost  drags  the  ground  and  his  tracks 
sink  deep,  clear,  and  sharp.  His  feet  are  smaller  than 
otter's  and  mink's,  but  easily  distinguishable  from  those 
two  fishers.  The  water  animal  leaves  a  spreading  foot- 
print, the  mark  of  the  webbed  toes  without  any  fur  on 
the  padding  of  the  toe-balls.  The  land  animal  of  the 
same  size  has  clear  cut,  narrower,  heavier  marks.  By 
March,  these  dotting  foot-tracks  thread  the  snow 
everywhere. 

Coming  on  marten  tracks  at  a  pine  log,  the  trap- 
per sends  in  his  dog  or  prods  with  a  stick.  Finding 


254:  THE  STORY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

nothing,  he  baits  a  steel-trap  with  pomatum,  covers  it 
deftly  with  snow,  drags  the  decoy  skin  about  to  conceal 
his  own  tracks,  and  goes  away  in  the  hope  that  the 
marten  will  come  back  to  this  log  to  guzzle  on  his  prey 
and  sleep. 

If  the  track  is  much  frequented,  or  the  forest  over- 
run with  marten  tracks,  the  trapper  builds  deadfalls, 
many  of  them  running  from  tree  to  tree  for  miles 
through  the  forest  in  a  circle  whose  circuit  brings  him 
back  to  his  cabin.  Eemnants  of  these  log  traps  may  be 
seen  through  all  parts  of  the  Rocky  Mountain  forests. 
Thirty  to  forty  traps  are  considered  a  day's  work  for 
one  man,  six  or  ten  marten  all  that  he  expects  to  take 
in  one  round;  but  when  marten  are  plentiful,  the  un- 
used traps  of  to-day  may  bring  a  prize  to-morrow. 

The  Indian  trapper  would  use  still  another  kind  of 
trap.  Where  the  tracks  are  plainly  frequently  used 
runways  to  watering-places  or  lair  in  hollow  tree,  the 
Indian  digs  a  pit  across  the  marten's  trail.  On  this  he 
spreads  brush  in  such  roof  fashion  that  though  the 
marten  is  a  good  climber,  if  once  he  falls  in,  it  is  al- 
most impossible  for  him  to  scramble  out.  If  a  poor 
cackling  grouse  or  "fool-hen"  be  thrust  into  the  pit, 
the  Indian  is  almost  sure  to  find  a  prisoner.  This  seems 
to  the  white  man  a  barbarous  kind  of  trapping;  but  the 
poor  "fool-hen,"  hunted  by  all  the  creatures  of  the 
forest,  never  seems  to  learn  wisdom,  but  invites  dis- 
aster by  popping  out  of  the  brush  to  stare  at  every 
living  thing  that  passes.  If  she  did  not  fall  a  victim 
in  the  pit,  she  certainly  would  to  her  own  curiosity 
above  ground.  To  the  steel-trap  the  hunter  attaches 
a  piece  of  log  to  entangle  the  prisoner's  flight  as  he 
rushes  through  the  underbush.  Once  caught  in  the 


WAPISTAN  THE  MARTEN  255 

steel  jaws,  little  wapistan  must  wait — wait  for  what? 
For  the  same  thing  that  comes  to  the  poor  "  fool-hen  " 
when  wapistan  goes  crashing  through  the  brush  after 
her;  for  the  same  thing  that  comes  to  the  bahy  squir- 
rels when  wapistan  climbs  a  tree  to  rob  the  squirrel's 
nest,  eat  the  young,  and  live  in  the  rifled  house;  for  the 
same  thing  that  comes  to  the  hoary  marmot  whistling 
his  spring  tune  just  outside  his  rocky  den  when  wapis- 
tan, who  has  climbed  up,  pounces  down  from  above. 
Little  death-dealer  he  has  been  all  his  life;  and  now 
death  comes  to  him  for  a  nobler  cause  than  the  stuffing 
of  a  greedy  maw — for  the  clothing  of  a  creature  nobler 
than  himself — man. 

The  otter  can  protect  himself  by  diving,  even  div- 
ing under  snow.  The  mink  has  craft  to  hide  himself 
under  leaves  so  that  the  sharpest  eyes  cannot  detect 
him.  Both  mink  and  otter  furs  have  very  little  of  that 
animal  smell  which  enables  the  foragers  to  follow  their 
trail.  What  gift  has  wapistan,  the  marten,  to  protect 
himself  against  all  the  powers  that  prey?  His  strength 
and  his  wisdom  lie  in  the  little  stubby  feet.  These  can 
climb. 

A  trapper's  dog  had  stumbled  on  a  marten  in  a 
stump  hole.  A  snap  of  the  marten's  teeth  sent  the  dog 
back  with  a  jump.  Wapistan  will  hang  on  to  the  nose 
of  a  dog  to  the  death ;  and  trappers'  dogs  grow  cautious. 
Before  the  dog  gathered  courage  to  make  another  rush, 
the  marten  escaped  by  a  rear  knot-hole,  getting  the 
start  of  his  enemy  by  fifty  yards.  Off  they  raced,  the 
dog  spending  himself  in  fury,  the  marten  keeping 
under  the  thorny  brush  where  his  enemy  could  not 
follow,  then  across  open  snow  where  the  dog  gained, 
then  into  the  pine  woods  where  the  trail  ended  on  the 


256  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

snow.  Where  had  the  fugitive  gone?  When  the  man 
came  up,  he  first  searched  for  log  holes.  There  were 
none.  Then  he  lifted  some  of  the  rocks.  There  was  no 
trace  of  wapistan.  But  the  dog  kept  baying  a  special 
tree,  a  blasted  trunk,  bare  as  a  mast  pole  and  seemingly 
impossible  for  any  animal  but  a  squirrel  to  climb. 
Knowing  the  trick  by  which  creatures  like  the  bob-cat 
can  flatten  their  body  into  a  resemblance  of  a  tree 
trunk,  the  trapper  searched  carefully  all  round  the 
bare  trunk.  It  was  not  till  many  months  afterward 
when  a  wind  storm  had  broken  the  tree  that  he  dis- 
covered the  upper  part  had  been  hollow.  Into  this 
eerie  nook  the  pursued  marten  had  scrambled  and 
waited  in  safety  till  dog  and  man  retired. 

In  one  of  his  traps  the  man  finds  a  peculiarly  short 
specimen  of  the  marten.  In  the  vernacular  of  the  craft 
this  marten's  bushy  tail  will  not  reach  as  far  back  as 
his  hind  legs  can  stretch.  Widely  different  from  the 
mink's  scarcely  visible  ears,  this  fellow's  ears  are 
sharply  upright,  keenly  alert.  He  is  like  a  fox,  where 
the  mink  resembles  a  furred  serpent.  Marten  moves, 
springs,  jumps  like  an  animal.  Mink  glides  like  a 
snake.  Marten  has  the  strong  neck  of  an  animal 
fighter.  Mink  has  the  long,  thin,  twisting  neck  which 
reptiles  need  to  give  them  striking  power  for  their 
fangs.  Mink's  under  lip  has  a  mere  rim  of  white  or 
yellow.  Marten's  breast  is  patched  sulphur.  But  this 
short  marten  with  a  tail  shorter  than  other  marten 
differs  from  his  kind  as  to  fur.  Both  mink  and  marten 
fur  are  reddish  brown;  but  this  short  marten's  fur  is 
almost  black,  of  great  depth,  of  great  thickness,  and  of 
three  qualities:  (1)  There  are  the  long  dark  overhairs 
the  same  as  the  ordinary  marten,  only  darker,  thicker, 


WAPISTAN  THE  MARTEN  257 

deeper;  (2)  there  is  the  soft  under  fur  of  the  ordinary 
marten,  usually  fawn,  in  this  fellow  deep  brown;  (3) 
there  is  the  skin  fur  resembling  chicken-down,  of  which 
this  little  marten  has  such  a  wealth — to  use  a  technical 
expression — you  cannot  find  his  scalp.  Without  going 
into  the  old  quarrel  about  species,  when  a  marten  has 
these  peculiarities,  he  is  known  to  the  trapper  as  sable. 
Whether  he  is  the  American  counterpart  to  the 
Russia  sable  is  a  disputed  point.  Whether  his  superior 
qualities  are  owing  to  age,  climate,  species,  it  is  enough 
for  the  trapper  to  know  that  short,  dark  marten  yields 
the  trade — sable. 


18 


CHAPTER   XVIII 

UNDER   THE    NORTH    STAR — WHERE    FOX    AND    ERMINE 

RUN 


Of  Foxes,  Many  and  Various— Red,  Cross,  Silver,  Black, 
Prairie,  Kit  or  Swift,  Arctic,  Blue,  and  Gray 

WHEREVER  grouse  and  rabbit  abound,  there  will 
foxes  run  and  there  will  the  hunter  set  steel-traps. 
But  however  beautiful  a  fox-skin  may  be  as  a  specimen, 
it  has  value  as  a  fur  only  when  it  belongs  to  one  of 
three  varieties — Arctic,  black,  and  silver.  Other  foxes — 
red,  cross,  prairie,  swift,  and  gray — the  trapper  will  take 
when  they  cross  his  path  and  sell  them  in  the  gross  at 
the  fur  post,  as  he  used  to  barter  buffalo-hides.  But 
the  hunter  who  traps  the  fox  for  its  own  sake,  and  not 
as  an  uncalculated  extra  to  the  mink-hunt  or  the 
beaver  total,  must  go  to  the  Far  North,  to  the  land  of 
winter  night  and  midnight  sun,  to  obtain  the  best  fox- 
skins. 

It  matters  not  to  the  trapper  that  the  little  kit  fox 
or  swift  at  run  among  the  hills  between  the  Missouri 
and  Saskatchewan  is  the  most  shapely  of  all  the  fox 
kind,  with  as  finely  pointed  a  nose  as  a  spitz  dog,  ears 
alert  as  a  terrier's  and  a  brush,  more  like  a  lady's  gray 
feather  boa  than  fur,  curled  round  his  dainty  toes. 
Little  kit's  fur  is  a  grizzled  gray  shading  to  mottled 
258 


OF  FOXES,  MANY  AND  VARIOUS  259 

fawn.  The  hairs  are  coarse,  horsey,  indistinctly 
marked,  and  the  fur  is  of  small  value  to  the  trader; 
so  dainty  little  swift,  who  looks  as  if  nature  made  him 
for  a  pet  dog  instead  of  a  fox,  is  slighted  by  the  hunter, 
unless  kit  persists  in  tempting  a  trap.  Eufus  the  red 
fellow,  with  his  grizzled  gray  head  and  black  ears  and 
whitish  throat  and  flaunting  purplish  tinges  down  his 
sides  like  a  prince  royal,  may  make  a  handsome  mat; 
but  as  a  fur  he  is  of  little  worth.  His  cousin  with  the 
black  fore  feet,  the  prairie  fox,  who  is  the  largest  and 
strongest  and  scientifically  finest  of  all  his  kind,  has 
more  value  as  a  fur.  The  colour  of  the  prairie  fox 
shades  rather  to  pale  ochre  and  yellow  that  the  nonde- 
script grizzled  gray  that  is  of  so  little  value  as  a  fur. 
Of  the  silver-gray  fox  little  need  be  said.  He  lives 
too  far  south — California  and  Texas  and  Mexico — to 
acquire  either  energy  or  gloss.  He  is  the  one  indolent 
member  of  the  fox  tribe,  and  his  fur  lacks  the  sheen 
that  only  winter  cold  can  give.  The  value  of  the 
cross  fox  depends  on  the  markings  that  give  him  his 
name.  If  the  bands,  running  diagonally  over  his 
shoulders  in  the  shape  of  a  cross,  shade  to  grayish 
blue  he  is  a  prize,  if  to  reddish  russet,  he  is  only  a 
curiosity. 

The  Arctic  and  black  and  silver  foxes  have  the 
pelts  that  at  their  worst  equal  the  other  rare  furs,  at 
their  best  exceed  the  value  of  all  other  furs  by  so 
much  that  the  lucky  trapper  who  takes  a  silver  fox  has 
made  his  fortune.  These,  then,  are  the  foxes  that  the 
trapper  seeks  and  these  are  to  be  found  only  on  the 
white  wastes  of  the  polar  zone. 

That  brings  up  the  question — what  is  a  silver  fox? 
Strange  as  it  may  seem,  neither  scientist  nor  hunter 


260  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

can  answer  that  question.  Nor  will  study  of  all  the 
park  specimens  in  the  world  tell  the  secret,  for  the 
simple  reason  that  only  an  Arctic  climate  can  pro- 
duce a  silver  fox;  and  parks  are  not  established  in 
the  Arctics  yet.  It  is  quite  plain  that  the  prairie  fox 
is  in  a  class  by  himself.  The  uniformity  of  his  size,  his 
strength,  his  habits,  his  appearance,  distinguish  him 
from  other  foxes.  It  is  quite  plain  that  the  little  kit 
fox  or  swift  is  of  a  kind  distinct  from  other  foxes. 
His  smallness,  the  shape  of  his  bones,  the  cast  of  his 
face,  the  trick  of  sitting  rather  than  lying,  that  won- 
derful big  bushy  soft  tail  of  which  a  peacock  might 
be  vain — all  differentiate  him  from  other  foxes.  The 
same  may  be  said  of  the  Arctic  fox  with  a  pelt  that  is 
more  like  white  wool  than  hairs  of  fur.  He  is  much 
smaller  than  the  red.  His  tail  is  bushier  and  larger 
than  the  swift,  and  like  all  Arctic  creatures,  he  has 
the  soles  of  his  feet  heavily  furred.  All  this  is  plain 
and  simple  classification.  But  how  about  Mr.  Blue 
Fox  of  the  same  size  and  habit  as  the  white  Arctic?  Is 
he  the  Arctic  fox  in  summer  clothing?  Yes,  say  some 
trappers;  and  they  show  their  pelts  of  an  Arctic  fox 
taken  in  summer  of  a  rusty  white.  But  no,  vow  other 
trappers — that  is  impossible,  for  here  are  blue  fox- 
skins  captured  in  the  depths  of  midwinter  with  not  a 
white  hair  among  them.  Look  closely  at  the  skins. 
The  ears  of  one  blue  fox  are  long,  perfect,  unbitten  by 
frost  or  foe — he  was  a  young  fellow;  and  he  is  blue. 
Here  is  another  with  ears  almost  worn  to  stubs  by 
fights  and  many  winters'  frosts — he  is  an  old  fellow; 
and  he,  too,  is  blue.  Well,  then,  the  blue  fox  may 
sometimes  be  the  white  Arctic  fox  in  summer  dress; 
but  the  blue  fox  who  is  blue  all  the  year  round,  varying 


OF  FOXES,  MANY  AND  VARIOUS  261 

only  in  the  shades  of  blue  with  the  seasons,  is  certainly 
not  the  white  Arctic  fox. 

The  same  difficulty  besets  distinction  of  silver  fox 
from  black.  The  old  scientists  classified  these  as  one 
and  the  same  creature.  Trappers  know  better.  So  do 
the  later  scientists  who  almost  agree  with  the  un- 
learned trapper's  verdict — there  are  as  many  species 
as  there  are  foxes.  Black  fox  is  at  its  best  in  mid- 
winter, deep,  brilliantly  glossy,  soft  as  floss,  and  yet 
almost  impenetrable — the  very  type  of  perfection  of 
its  kind.  But  with  the  coming  of  the  tardy  Arctic 
spring  comes  a  change.  The  snows  are  barely  melted 
in  May  when  the  sheen  leaves  the  fur.  By  June,  the 
black  hairs  are  streaked  with  gray;  and  the  black  fox 
is  a  gray  fox.  Is  it  at  some  period  of  the  transition 
that  the  black  fox  becomes  a  silver  fox,  with  the  gray 
hairs  as  sheeny  as  the  black  and  each  gray  hair  deli- 
cately tipped  with  black?  That  question,  too,  remains 
unanswered;  for  certainly  the  black  fox  trapped  when 
in  his  gray  summer  coat  is  not  the  splendid  silver  fox 
of  priceless  value.  Black  fox  turning  to  a  dull  gray 
of  midsummer  may  not  be  silver  fox;  but  what  about 
gray  fox  turning  to  the  beautiful  glossy  black  of  mid- 
winter? Is  that  what  makes  silver  fox?  Is  silver  fox 
simply  a  fine  specimen  of  black  caught  at  the  very 
period  when  he  is  blooming  into  his  greatest  beauty? 
The  distinctive  difference  between  gray  fox  and  silver 
is  that  gray  fox  has  gray  hairs  among  hairs  of  other 
colour,  while  silver  fox  has  silver  hair  tipped  with 
glossiest  black  on  a  foundation  of  downy  gray  black. 

Even  greater  confusion  surrounds  the  origin  of 
cross  and  red  and  gray.  Trappers  find  all  these  differ- 
ent cubs  in  one  burrow;  but  as  the  cubs  grow,  those 


262      THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

pronounced  cross  turn  out  to  be  red,  or  the  red  be- 
comes cross;  and  what  they  become  at  maturity,  that 
they  remain,  varying  only  with  the  seasons.*  It  takes 
many  centuries  to  make  one  perfect  rose.  Is  it  the 
same  with  the  silver  fox?  Is  he  a  freak  or  a  climax  or 
the  regular  product  of  yearly  climatic  changes  caught 
in  the  nick  of  time  by  some  lucky  trapper?  Ask  the 
scientist  that  question,  and  he  theorizes.  Ask  the 
trapper,  and  he  tells  you  if  he  could  only  catch  enough 
silver  foxes  to  study  that  question,  he  would  quit  trap- 
ping. In  all  the  maze  of  ignorance  and  speculation, 
there  is  one  anchored  fact.  While  animals  turn  a 
grizzled  gray  with  age,  the  fine  gray  coats  are  not 
caused  by  age.  Young  animals  of  the  rarest  furs — fox 
and  ermine — are  born  in  ashy  colour  that  turns  to 
gray  while  they  are  still  in  their  first  nest. 

To  say  that  silver  fox  is  costly  solely  because  it  is 
rare  is  sheerest  nonsense.  It  would  be  just  as  sensible 
to  say  that  labradorite,  which  is  rare,  should  be  as 
costly  as  diamonds.  It  is  the  intrinsic  beauty  of  the 
fur,  as  of  the  diamonds,  that  constitutes  its  first  value. 
The  facts  that  the  taking  of  a  silver  fox  is  always  pure 
luck,  that  the  luck  comes  seldom,  that  the  trapper 
must  have  travelled  countless  leagues  by  snow-shoe  and 
dog  train  over  the  white  wastes  of  the  North,  that 
trappers  in  polar  regions  are  exposed  to  more  dangers 
and  hardships  than  elsewhere  and  that  the  fur  must 
have  been  carried  a  long  distance  to  market — add  to 
the  first  high  value  of  silver  fox  till  it  is  not  sur- 
prising that  little  pelts  barely  two  feet  long  have 
sold  for  prices  ranging  from  $500  to  $5,000.  For  the 

*  That  is,  as  far  as  trappers  yet  know. 


OF  FOXES,  MANY  AND   VARIOUS  263 

trapper  the  way  to  the  fortune  of  a  silver  fox  is  the 
same  as  the  road  to  fortune  for  all  other  men — by  the 
homely  trail  of  every-day  work.  Cheers  from  the  fort 
gates  bid  trappers  setting  out  for  far  Northern  fields 
God-speed.  Long  ago  there  would  have  been  a  firing  of 
cannon  when  the  Northern  hunters  left  for  their  dis- 
tant camping-grounds;  but  the  cannon  of  Churchill  lie 
rusting  to-day  and  the  hunters  who  go  to  the  sub- 
Arctics  and  the  Arctics  no  longer  set  out  from  Church- 
ill on  the  bay,  but  from  one  of  the  little  inland  Mac- 
Kenzie  Kiver  posts.  If  the  fine  powdery  snow-drifts 
are  glossed  with  the  ice  of  unbroken  sun-glare,  the 
runners  strap  iron  crampets  to  their  snow-shoes,  and 
with  a  great  jingling  of  the  dog-bells,  barking  of  the 
huskies,  and  yelling  of  the  drivers,  coast  away  for  the 
leagueless  levels  of  the  desolate  North.  Frozen  river- 
beds are  the  only  path  followed,  for  the  high  cliffs — 
almost  like  ramparts  on  the  lower  MacKenzie — shut 
off  the  drifting  east  winds  that  heap  barricades  of 
snow  in  one  place  and  at  another  sweep  the  ground  so 
clear  that  the  sleighs  pull  heavy  as  stone.  Does  a 
husky  fag?  A  flourish  of  whips  and  off  the  laggard 
scampers,  keeping  pace  with  the  others  in  the  traces,  a 
pace  that  is  set  for  forty  miles  a  day  with  only  one 
feeding  time,  nightfall  when  the  sleighs  are  piled  as  a 
wind-break  and  the  frozen  fish  are  doled  out  to  the 
ravenous  dogs.  Gun  signals  herald  the  hunter's  ap- 
proach to  a  chance  camp;  and  no  matter  how  small  and 
mean"  the  tepee,  the  door  is  always  open  for  whatever 
visitor,  the  meat  pot  set  simmering  for  hungry  travel- 
lers. When  the  snow  crust  cuts  the  dogs'  feet,  buck- 
skin shoes  are  tied  on  the  huskies;  and  when  an  occa- 
sional dog  fags  entirely,  he  is  turned  adrift  from  the 


264:  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

traces  to  die.  Kelentless  as  death  is  Northern  cold; 
and  wherever  these  long  midwinter  journeys  are  made, 
gruesome  traditions  are  current  of  hunter  and  husky. 

I  remember  hearing  of  one  old  husky  that  fell 
hopelessly  lame  during  the  north  trip.  Often  the 
drivers  are  utter  brutes  to  their  dogs,  speaking  in 
curses  which  they  say  is  the  only  language  a  husky  can 
understand,  emphasized  with  the  blows  of  a  club.  Too 
often,  as  well,  the  huskies  are  vicious  curs  ready  to 
skulk  or  snap  or  bolt  or  fight,  anything  but  work.  But 
in  this  case  the  dog  was  an  old  reliable  that  kept  the 
whole  train  in  line,  and  the  driver  had  such  an  affec- 
tion for  the  veteran  husky  that  when  rheumatism 
crippled  the  dog's  legs  the  man  had  not  the  heart  to 
shoot  such  a  faithful  servant.  The  dog  was  turned 
loose  from  the  traces  and  hobbled  lamely  behind  the 
scampering  teams.  At  last  he  fell  behind  altogether, 
but  at  night  limped  into  camp  whining  his  joy  and 
asking  dumbly  for  the  usual  fish.  In  the  morning 
when  the  other  teams  set  out,  the  old  husky  was  power- 
less to  follow.  But  he  could  still  whine  and  wag  his 
tail.  He  did  both  with  all  his  might,  so  that  when 
the  departing  driver  looked  back  over  his  shoulder,  he 
saw  a  pair  of  eyes  pleading,  a  head  with  raised  alert 
ears,  shoulders  straining  to  lift  legs  that  refused  to 
follow,  and  a  bushy  tail  thwacking — thwacking — 
thwacking  the  snow! 

"  You  ought  to  shoot  him,"  advised  one  driver. 

"  You  do  it — you're  a  dead  sure  aim,"  returned  the 
man  who  had  owned  the  dog. 

But  the  other  drivers  were  already  coasting  over 
the  white  wastes.  The  owner  looked  at  his  sleighs  as 
if  wondering  whether  they  would  stand  an  additional 


OF  FOXES,  MANY  AND  VARIOUS  265 

burden.  Then  probably  reflecting  that  old  age  is  not 
desirable  for  a  suffering  dog  in  a  bitingly  keen  frost, 
he  turned  towards  the  husky  with  his  hand  in  his  belt. 
Thwack — thwack  went  the  tail  as  much  as  to  say:  "  Of 
course  he  wouldn't  desert  me  after  Fve  hauled  his 
sleigh  all  my  life!  Thwack — thwack!  I'd  get  up  and 
jump  all  around  him  if  I  could;  there  isn't  a  dog-gone 
husky  in  all  polar  land  with  half  as  good  a  master  as 
I  have!" 

The  man  stopped.  Instead  of  going  to  the  dog 
he  ran  back  to  his  sleigh,  loaded  his  arms  full  of  frozen 
fish  and  threw  them  down  before  the  dog.  Then  he 
put  one  caribou-skin  under  the  old  dog,  spread  another 
over  him  and  ran  away  with  his  train  while  the  husky 
was  still  guzzling.  The  fish  had  been  poisoned  to  be 
thrown  out  to  the  wolves  that  so  often  pursue  Northern 
dog  trains. 

Once  a  party  of  hunters  crossing  the  Northern 
Eockies  came  on  a  dog  train  stark  and  stiff.  Where 
was  the  master  who  had  bidden  them  stand  while  he 
felt  his  way  blindly  through  the  white  whirl  of  a  bliz- 
zard for  the  lost  path?  In  the  middle  of  the  last 
century,  one  of  that  famous  family  of  fur  traders,  a 
MacKenzie,  left  Georgetown  to  go  north  to  Red  River 
in  Canada.  He  never  went  back  to  Georgetown 
and  he  never  reached  Red  River;  but  his  coat  was 
found  fluttering  from  a  tree,  a  death  signal  to  at- 
tract the  first  passer-by,  and  the  body  of  the  lost 
trader  was  discovered  not  far  off  in  the  snow.  Un- 
less it  is  the  year  of  the  rabbit  pest  and  the  rabbit 
ravagers  are  bold  with  hunger,  the  pursuing  wolves 
seldom  give  full  chase.  They  skulk  far  to  the  rear 
of  the  dog  trains,  licking  up  the  stains  of  the  bleed- 


266  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

ing  feet,  or  hanging  spectrally  on  the  dim  frosty  hori- 
zon all  night  long.  Hunger  drives  them  on;  but  they 
seem  to  lack  the  courage  to  attack.  I  know  of  one  case 
where  the  wolves  followed  the  dog  trains  bringing  out 
a  trader's  family  from  the  North  down  the  river-bed 
for  nearly  five  hundred  miles.  What  man  hunter  would 
follow  so  far? 

The  farther  north  the  fox  hunter  goes,  the  shorter 
grow  the  days,  till  at  last  the  sun,  which  has  rolled 
across  the  south  in  a  wheel  of  fire,  dwindles  to  a  disk, 
the  disk  to  a  rim — then  no  rim  at  all  comes  up,  and  it 
is  midwinter  night,  night  but  not  darkness.  The  white  of 
endless  unbroken  snow,  the  glint  of  icy  particles  filling 
the  air,  the  starlight  brilliant  as  diamond  points,  the 
Aurora  Borealis  in  curtains  and  shafts  and  billows  of 
tenuous  impalpable  rose-coloured  fire — all  brighten  the 
polar  night  so  that  the  sun  is  unmissed.  This  is  the 
region  chiefly  hunted  by  the  Eskimo,  with  a  few  white 
men  and  Chippewyan  half-breeds.  The  regular  North- 
ern hunters  do  not  go  as  far  as  the  Arctics,  but  choose 
their  hunting-ground  somewhere  in  the  region  of 
"  little  sticks,"  meaning  the  land  where  timber  growth 
is  succeeded  by  dwarf  scrubs. 

The  hunting-ground  is  chosen  always  from  the  signs 
written  across  the  white  page  of  the  snow.  If  there 
are  claw-marKs,  bird  signs  of  Northern  grouse  or  white 
ptarmigan  or  snow-bunting,  ermine  will  be  plentiful; 
for  the  Northern  birds  with  their  clogged  stockings  of 
feet  feathers  have  a  habit  of  floundering  under  the 
powdery  snow;  and  up  through  that  powdery  snow 
darts  the  snaky  neck  of  stoat,  the  white  weasel-hunter 
of  birds.  If  there  are  the  deep  plunges  of  the  white 
hare,  lynx  and  fox  and  mink  and  marten  and  pekan 


OF  FOXES,  MANY  AND  VARIOUS  267 

will  be  plentiful;  for  the  poor  white  hare  feeds  all  the 
creatures  of  the  Northern  wastes,  man  and  beast.  If 
there  are  little  dainty  tracks — oh,  such  dainty  tracks 
that  none  but  a  high-stepping,  clear-cut,  clean-limbed, 
little  thoroughbred  could  make  them! — tracks  of  four 
toes  and  a  thumb  claw  much  shorter  than  the  rest, 
with  a  padding  of  five  basal  foot-bones  behind  the  toes, 
tracks  that  show  a  fluff  on  the  snow  as  of  furred  foot- 
soles,  tracks  that  go  in  clean,  neat,  clear  long  leaps 
and  bounds — the  hunter  knows  that  he  has  found  the 
signs  of  the  Northern  fox. 

Here,  then,  he  will  camp  for  the  winter.  Camping 
in  the  Far  North  means  something  different  from  the 
hastily  pitched  tent  of  the  prairie.  The  north  wind 
blows  biting,  keen,  unbroken  in  its  sweep.  The  hunter 
must  camp  where  that  wind  will  not  carry  scent  of  his 
tent  to  the  animal  world.  For  his  own  sake,  he  must 
camp  under  shelter  from  that  wind,  behind  a  cairn  of 
stones,  below  a  cliff,  in  a  ravine.  Poles  have  been 
brought  from  the  land  of  trees  on  the  dog  sleigh. 
These  are  put  up,  criss-crossed  at  top,  and  over  them 
is  laid,  not  the  canvas  tent,  but  a  tent  of  skins,  caribou, 
wolf,  moose,  at  a  sharp  enough  angle  to  let  the  snow 
slide  off.  Then  snow  is  banked  deep,  completely  round 
the  tent.  For  fire,  the  Eskimo  depends  on  whale-oil 
and  animal  grease.  The  white  man  or  half-breed  from 
the  South  hoards  up  chips  and  sticks.  But  mainly  he 
depends  on  exercise  and  animal  food  for  warmth.  At 
night  he  sleeps  in  a  fur  bag.  In  the  morning  that  bag 
is  frozen  stiff  as  boards  by  the  moisture  of  his  own 
breath.  Need  one  ask  why  the  rarest  furs,  which  can 
only  be  produced  by  the  coldest  of  climates,  are  so 
costly? 


268  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

Having  found  the  tracks  of  the  fox,  the  hunter  sets 
out  his  traps  baited  with  fish  or  rabbit  or  a  bird-head. 
If  the  snow  be  powdery  enough,  and  the  trapper  keen 
in  wild  lore,  he  may  even  know  what  sort  of  a  fox  to 
expect.  In  the  depths  of  midwinter,  the  white  Arctic 
fox  has  a  wool  fur  to  his  feet  like  a  brahma  chicken. 
This  leaves  its  mark  in  the  fluffy  snow.  A  ravenous 
fellow  he  always  is,  this  white  fox  of  the  hungry  North, 
bold  from  ignorance  of  man,  but  hard  to  distinguish 
from  the  snow  because  of  his  spotless  coat.  The  blue 
fox  being  slightly  smaller  than  the  full-grown  Arctic, 
lopes  along  with  shorter  leaps  by  which  the  trapper 
may  know  the  quarry;  but  the  blue  fox  is  just  as  hard 
to  distinguish  from  the  snow  as  his  white  brother. 
The  gray  frost  haze  is  almost  the  same  shade  as  his 
steel-blue  coat;  and  when  spring  comes,  blue  fox  is  the 
same  colour  as  the  tawny  moss  growth.  Colour  is  blue 
fox's  defence.  Consequently  blue  foxes  show  more 
signs  of  age  than  white — stubby  ears  frozen  low,  battle- 
worn  teeth,  dulled  claws. 

The  chances  are  that  the  trapper  will  see  the  black 
fox  himself  almost  as  soon  as  he  sees  his  tracks;  for  the 
sheeny  coat  that  is  black  fox's  beauty  betrays  him 
above  the  snow.  Bushy  tail  standing  straight  out, 
every  black  hair  bristling  erect  with  life,  the  white  tail- 
tip  flaunting  a  defiance,  head  up,  ears  alert,  fore  feet 
cleaving  the  air  with  the  swift  ease  of  some  airy  bird — 
on  he  comes,  jump — jump — jump — more  of  a  leap  than 
a  lope,  galloping  like  a  wolf,  altogether  different  from 
the  skulking  run  of  little  foxes,  openly  exulting  in  his 
beauty  and  his  strength  and  his  speed!  There  is  no 
mistaking  black  fox.  If  the  trapper  does  not  see  the 
black  fox  scurrying  over  the  snow,  the  tell-tale  char- 


THE  WHITE  ERMINE  269 

acteristics  of  the  footprints  are  the  length  and  strength 
of  the  leaps.  Across  these  leaps  the  hunter  leaves  his 
traps.  Does  he  hope  for  a  silver  fox?  Does  every 
prospector  expect  to  find  gold  nuggets?  In  the  heyday 
of  fur  company  prosperity,  not  half  a  dozen  true  silver 
foxes  would  he  sent  out  in  a  year.  To-day  I  doubt  if 
more  than  one  good  silver  fox  is  sent  out  in  half  a 
dozen  years.  But  good  white  fox  and  black  and  blue 
are  prizes  enough  in  themselves,  netting  as  much  to  the 
trapper  as  mink  or  beaver  or  sable. 

II 
The  Wliite  Ermine 

All  that  was  said  of  the  mystery  of  fox  life  applies 
equally  to  ermine.  Why  is  the  ermine  of  Wisconsin 
and  Minnesota  and  Dakota  a  dirty  little  weasel  noted 
for  killing  forty  chickens  in  a  night,  wearing  a  mahog- 
any-coloured coat  with  a  sulphur  strip  down  his  throat, 
while  the  ermine  of  the  Arctics  is  as  white  as  snow, 
noted  for  his  courage,  wearing  a  spotless  coat  which 
kings  envy,  yes,  and  take  from  him?  For  a  long  time 
the  learned  men  who  study  animal  life  from  museums 
held  that  the  ermine's  coat  turned  white  from  the  same 
cause  as  human  hair,  from  senility  and  debility  and  the 
depleting  effect  of  an  intensely  trying  climate.  But 
the  trappers  told  a  different  story.  They  told  of  baby 
ermine  born  in  Arctic  burrows,  in  March,  April,  May, 
June,  while  the  mother  was  still  in  white  coat,  babies 
born  in  an  ashy  coat  something  like  a  mouse-skin  that 
turned  to  fleecy  white  within  ten  days.  They  told  of 
ermine  shedding  his  brown  coat  in  autumn  to  display 
a  fresh  layer  of  iron-gray  fur  that  turned  sulphur 


270  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

white  within  a  few  days.  They  told  of  the  youngest 
and  smallest  and  strongest  ermine  with  the  softest  and 
whitest  coats.  That  disposed  of  the  senility  theory. 
All  the  trapper  knows  is  that  the  whitest  ermine  is 
taken  when  the  cold  is  most  intense  and  most  contin- 
uous, that  just  as  the  cold  slackens  the  ermine  coat 
assumes  the  sulphur  tinges,  deepening  to  russet  and 
brown,  and  that  the  whitest  ermine  instead  of  showing 
senility,  always  displays  the  most  active  and  courage- 
ous sort  of  deviltry. 

Summer  or  winter,  the  Northern  trapper  is  con- 
stantly surrounded  by  ermine  and  signs  of  ermine. 
There  are  the  tiny  claw-tracks  almost  like  frost 
tracery  across  the  snow.  There  is  the  rifled  nest  of  a 
poor  grouse — eggs  sucked,  or  chickens  murdered,  the 
nest  fouled  so  that  it  emits  the  stench  of  a  skunk,  or 
the  mother  hen  lying  dead  from  a  wound  in  her  throat. 
There  is  the  frightened  rabbit  loping  across  the  fields 
in  the  wildest,  wobbliest,  most  woe-begone  leaps,  try- 
ing to  shake  something  off  that  is  clinging  to  his 
throat  till  over  he  tumbles — the  prey  of  a  hunter  that 
is  barely  the  size  of  rabbit's  paw.  There  is  the  water- 
rat  flitting  across  the  rocks  in  blind  terror,  regardless 
of  the  watching  trapper,  caring  only  to  reach  safety — 
water — water!  Behind  comes  the  pursuer — this  is  no 
still  hunt  but  a  straight  open  chase — a  little  creature 
about  the  length  of  a  man's  hand,  with  a  tail  almost  as 
long,  a  body  scarcely  the  thickness  of  two  fingers,  a 
mouth  the  size  of  a  bird's  beak,  and  claws  as  small  as 
a  sparrow's.  It  gallops  in  lithe  bounds  with  its  long 
neck  straight  up  and  its  beady  eyes  fastened  on  the 
flying  water-rat.  Splash — dive — into  the  water  goes 
the  rat!  Splash — dive — into  the  water  goes  the 


THE  WHITE  ERMINE  271 

ermine!  There  is  a  great  stirring  up  of  the  muddy 
bottom.  The  water-rat  has  tried  to  hide  in  the  under- 
tangle;  and  the  ermine  has  not  only  dived  in  pursuit 
but  headed  the  water-rat  back  from  the  safe  retreat  of 
his  house.  Up  comes  a  black  nose  to  the  surface  of  the 
water.  The  rat  is  foolishly  going  to  try  a  land  race. 
Up  comes  a  long  neck  like  a  snake's,  the  head  erect, 
the  beady  eyes  on  the  fleeing  water-rat — then  with  a 
splash  they  race  overland.  The  water-rat  makes  for  a 
hole  among  the  rocks.  Ermine  sees  and  with  a  spurt 
of  speed  is  almost  abreast  when  the  rat  at  bay  turns 
with  a  snap  at  his  pursuer.  But  quick  as  flash,  the  er- 
mine has  pirouetted  into  the  air.  The  long  writhing 
neck  strikes  like  a  serpent's  fangs  and  the  sharp  fore 
teeth  have  pierced  the  brain  of  the  rat.  The  victim 
dies  without  a  cry,  without  a  struggle,  without  a  pain. 
That  long  neck  was  not  given  the  ermine  for  nothing. 
Neither  were  those  muscles  massed  on  either  side  of 
his  jaws  like  bulging  cheeks. 

In  winter  the  ermine's  murderous  depredations  are 
more  apparent.  Now  the  ermine,  too,  seta  itself  to 
reading  the  signs  of  the  snow.  Now  the  ermine  be- 
comes as  keen  a  still  hunter  as  the  man.  Sometimes 
a  whirling  snow-fall  catches  a  family  of  grouse  out 
from  furze  cover.  The  trapper,  too,  is  abroad  in  the 
snow-storm;  for  that  is  the  time  when  he  can  set  his 
traps  undetected.  The  white  whirl  confuses  the  birds. 
They  run  here,  there,  everywhere,  circling  about,  bury- 
ing themselves  in  the  snow  till  the  storm  passes  over. 
The  next  day  when  the  hunter  is  going  the  rounds  of 
these  traps,  along  comes  an  ermine.  It  does  not  see 
him.  It  is  following  a  scent,  head  down,  body  close  to 
ground,  nose  here,  there,  threading  the  maze  which 


272  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

the  crazy  grouse  had  run.  But  stop,  thinks  the  trap- 
per, the  snow-fall  covered  the  trail.  Exactly — that  is 
why  the  little  ermine  dives  under  snow  just  as  it  would 
under  water,  running  along  with  serpentine  wavings 
of  the  white  powdery  surface  till  up  it  comes  again 
where  the  wind  has  blown  the  snow-fall  clear.  Along  it 
runs,  still  intent,  quartering  back  where  it  loses  the 
scent — along  again  till  suddenly  the  head  lifts — that 
motion  of  the  snake  before  it  strikes!  The  trapper 
looks.  Tail  feathers,  head  feathers,  stupid  blinking 
eyes  poke  through  the  fluffy  snow-drift.  And  now  the 
ermine  no  longer  runs  openly.  There  are  too  many 
victims  this  time — it  may  get  all  the  foolish  hidden 
grouse;  so  it  dives  and  if  the  man  had  not  alarmed  the 
stupid  grouse,  ermine  would  have  darted  up  through 
the  snow  with  a  finishing  stab  for  each  bird. 

By  still  hunt  and  open  hunt,  by  nose  and  eye,  re- 
lentless as  doom,  it  follows  its  victims  to  the  death. 
Does  the  bird  perch  on  a  tree?  Up  goes  the  ermine, 
too,  on  the  side  away  from  the  bird's  head.  Does  the 
mouse  thread  a  hundred  mazes  and  hide  in  a  hole? 
The  ermine  threads  every  maze,  marches  into  the  hid- 
den nest  and  takes  murderous  possession.  Does  the 
rat  hide  under  rock?  Under  the  rock  goes  the  ermine. 
Should  the  trapper  follow  to  see  the  outcome  of  the 
contest,  the  ermine  will  probably  sit  at  the  mouth  of 
the  rat-hole,  blinking  its  beady  eyes  at  him.  If  he  at- 
tacks, down  it  bolts  out  of  reach.  If  he  retires,  out  it 
comes  looking  at  this  strange  big  helpless  creature  with 
bold  contempt. 

The  keen  scent,  the  keen  eyes,  the  keen  ears  warn 
it  of  an  enemy's  approach.  Summer  and  winter,  its 
changing  coat  conceals  it.  The  furze  where  it  runs 


THE  WHITE  ERMINE  273 

protects  it  from  fox  and  lynx  and  wolverine.  Its  size 
admits  it  to  the  tiniest  of  hiding-places.  All  that  the 
ermine  can  do  to  hunt  down  a  victim,  it  can  do  to  hide 
from  an  enemy.  These  qualities  make  it  almost  in- 
vincible to  other  heasts  of  the  chase.  Two  joints  in 
the  armour  of  its  defence  has  the  little  ermine.  Its 
black  tail-tip  moving  across  snow  betrays  it  to  ene- 
mies in  winter:  the  very  intentness  on  prey,  its  ex- 
cess of  self-confidence,  leads  it  into  danger;  for  in- 
stance, little  ermine  is  royally  contemptuous  of  man's 
tracks.  If  the  man  does  not  molest  it,  it  will  follow  a 
scent  and  quarter  and  circle  under  his  feet;  so  the  man 
has  no  difficulty  in  taking  the  little  beast  whose  fur  is 
second  only  to  that  of  the  silver  fox.  So  bold  are  the 
little  creatures  that  the  man  may  discover  their  bur- 
rows under  brush,  in  rock,  in  sand  holes,  and  take  the 
whole  litter  before  the  game  mother  will  attempt  to 
escape.  Indeed,  the  plucky  little  ermine  will  follow 
the  captor  of  her  brood.  Steel  rat  traps,  tiny  dead- 
falls, frosted  bits  of  iron  smeared  with  grease  to  tempt 
the  ermine's  tongue  which  the  frost  will  hold  like  a 
vice  till  the  trapper  comes,  and,  moat  common  of  all, 
twine  snares  such  as  entrap  the  rabbit,  are  the  means 
by  which  the  ermine  comes  to  his  apppintj^jend  at  the 
hands  of  men.  C^T^F 

The  quality  of  the  pettshows  as  wide  variety  as 
the  skin  of  the  fox;  and  for  as  mysterious  reasons. 
Why  an  ermine  a  year  old  should  have  a  coat  like  sul- 
phur and  another  of  the  same  age  a  coat  like  swan's- 
down,  neither  trapper  nor  scientist  has  yet  discovered. 
The  price  of  the  perfect  ermine-pelt  is  higher  than  any 
other  of  the  rare  furs  taken  in  North  America  except 
silver  fox;  but  it  no  longer  commands  the  fabulous 
19 


274  THE  STORY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

prices  that  were  certainly  paid  for  specimen  ermine- 
skins  in  the  days  of  the  Georges  in  England  and  the 
later  Louis  in  France.  How  were  those  fabulously 
costly  skins  prepared?  Old  trappers  say  no  perfectly 
downy  pelt  is  ever  taken  from  an  ermine,  that  the 
downy  effect  is  produced  by  a  trick  of  the  trade — 
scraping  the  flesh  side  so  deftly  that  all  the  coarse 
hairs  will  fall  out,  leaving  only  the  soft  under-fur. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

WHAT  THE  TRAPPER  STANDS  FOR 

WAGING  ceaseless  war  against  beaver  and  moose, 
types  of  nature's  most  harmless  creatures,  against  wolf 
and  wolverine,  types  of  nature's  most  destructive 
agents,  against  traders  who  were  rivals  and  Indians 
who  were  hostiles,  the  trapper  would  almost  seem  to  be 
himself  a  type  of  nature's  arch-destroyer. 

Beautiful  as  a  dream  is  the  silent  world  of  forest 
and  prairie  and  mountain  where  the  trapper  moves 
with  noiseless  stealth  of  the  most  skilful  of  all  the 
creatures  that  prey.  In  that  world,  the  crack  of  the 
trapper's  rifle,  the  snap  of  the  cruel  steel  jaws  in  his 
trap,  seem  the  only  harsh  discords  in  the  harmony  of 
an  existence  that  riots  with  a  very  fulness  of  life.  But 
such  a  world  is  only  a  drean.  The  reality  is  cruel  as 
death.  Of  all  the  creatures  that  prey,  man  is  the  most 
merciful. 

Ordinarily,  knowledge  of  animal  life  is  drawn  from 
three  sources.  There  are  park  specimens,  stuffed  to 
the  utmost  of  their  eating  capacity  and  penned  off 
from  the  possibility  of  harming  anything  weaker  than 
themselves.  There  are  the  private  pets  fed  equally 
well,  pampered  and  chained  safely  from  harming  or 
being  harmed.  There  are  the  wild  creatures  roaming 

275 


276  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

natural  haunts,  some  two  or  three  days'  travel  from 
civilization,  whose  natures  have  been  gradually  modi- 
fied generation  by  generation  from  being  constantly 
hunted  with  long-range  repeaters.  Judging  from  these 
sorts  of  wild  animals,  it  certainly  seems  that  the  brute 
creation  has  been  sadly  maligned.  The  bear  cubs  lick 
each  other's  paws  with  an  amatory  singing  that  is 
something  between  the  purr  of  a  cat  and  the  grunt  of 
a  pig.  The  old  polars  wrestle  like  boys  out  of  school, 
flounder  in  grotesque  gambols  that  are  laughably 
clumsy,  good-naturedly  dance  on  their  hind  legs,  and 
even  eat  from  their  keeper's  hand.  And  all  the  deer 
family  can  be  seen  nosing  one  another  with  the  affec- 
tion of  turtle-doves.  Surely  the  worst  that  can  be  said 
of  these  animals  is  that  they  shun  the  presence  of  man. 
Perhaps  some  kindly  sentimentalist  wonders  if  things 
hadn't  gone  so  badly  out  of  gear  in  a  certain  historic 
garden  long  ago,  whether  mankind  would  not  be  on  as 
friendly  relations  with  the  animal  world  as  little  boys 
and  girls  are  with  bears  and  baboons  in  the  fairy  books. 
And  the  scientist  goes  a  step  further,  and  soberly  asks 
whether  these  wild  things  of  the  woods  are  not  kindred 
of  man  after  all ;  for  have  not  man  and  beast  ascended 
the  same  scale  of  life?  Across  the  centuries,  modern 
evolution  shakes  hands  with  old-fashioned  transmi- 
gration. 

To  be  sure,  members  of  the  deer  family  sometimes 
kill  their  mates  in  fits  of  blind  rage,  and  the  innocent 
bear  cubs  fall  to  mauling  their  keeper,  and  the  old 
bears  have  been  known  to  eat  their  young.  These 
things  are  set  down  as  freaks  in  the  animal  world,  and 
in  nowise  allowed  to  upset  the  influences  drawn  from 
animals  living  in  unnatural  surroundings,  behind  iron 


WHAT  THE  TRAPPER  STANDS  FOR  277 

bars,  or  in  haunts  where  long-range  rifles  have  put  the 
fear  of  man  in  the  animal  heart. 

Now  the  trapper  studies  animal  life  where  there  is 
neither  a  pen  to  keep  the  animal  from  doing  what  it 
wants  to  do,  nor  any  rifle  hut  his  own  to  teach  wild 
creatures  fear.  Knowing  nothing  of  science  and  senti- 
ment, he  never  clips  facts  to  suit  his  theory.  On  the 
truthfulness  of  his  eyes  depends  his  own  life,  so  that 
he  never  blinks  his  eyes  to  disagreeable  facts. 

Looking  out  on  the  life  of  the  wilds  clear-visioned 
as  his  mountain  air,  the  trapper  sees  a  world  beautiful 
as  a  dream  but  cruel  as  death.  He  sees  a  world  where 
to  be  weak,  to  be  stupid,  to  be  dull,  to  be  slow,  to  be 
simple,  to  be  rash  are  the  unpardonable  crimes;  where 
the  weak  must  grow  strong,  keen  of  eye  and  ear  and 
instinct,  sharp,  wary,  swift,  wise,  and  cautious;  where 
in  a  word  the  weak  must  grow  fit  to  survive  or — perish ! 

The  slow  worm  fills  the  hungry  maw  of  the  gaping 
bird.  Into  the  soft  fur  of  the  rabbit  that  has  strayed 
too  far  from  cover  clutch  the  swooping  talons  of  an 
eagle.  The  beaver  that  exposes  himself  overland  risks 
bringing  lynx  or  wolverine  or  wolf  on  his  home  colony. 
Bird  preys  on  worm,  mink  on  bird,  lynx  on  mink,  wolf 
on  lynx,  and  bear  on  all  creatures  that  live  from  men 
and  moose  down  to  the  ant  and  the  embryo  life  in  the 
ant's  egg.  But  the  vision  of  ravening  destruction  does 
not  lead  the  trapper  to  morbid  conclusions  on  life  as  it 
leads  so  many  housed  thinkers  in  the  walled  cities;  for 
the  same  world  that  reveals  to  him  such  ravening 
slaughter  shows  him  that  every  creature,  the  weakest 
and  the  strongest,  has  some  faculty,  some  instinct, 
some  endowment  of  cunning,  or  dexterity  or  caution, 
some  gift  of  concealment,  of  flight,  of  semblance,  of 


278  THE  STORY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

death — that  will  defend  it  from  all  enemies.  The 
ermine  is  one  of  the  smallest  of  all  hunters,  but  it  can 
throw  an  enemy  off  the  scent  by  diving  under  snow. 
The  rabbit  is  one  of  the  most  helpless  of  all  hunted 
things,  but  it  can  take  cover  from  foes  of  the  air  under 
thorny  brush,  and  run  fast  enough  to  outwind  the 
breath  of  a  pursuer,  and  double  back  quick  enough  to 
send  a  harrying  eagle  flopping  head  over  heels  on  the 
ground,  and  simulate  the  stillness  of  inanimate  objects 
surrounding  it  so  truly  that  the  passer-by  can  scarcely 
distinguish  the  balls  of  fawn  fur  from  the  russet  bark 
of  a  log.  And  the  rabbit's  big  eyes  and  ears  are  not 
given  it  for  nothing. 

Poet  and  trapper  alike  see  the  same  world,  and  for 
the  same  reason.  Both  seek  only  to  know  the  truth, 
to  see  the  world  as  it  is;  and  the  world  that  they  see 
is  red  in  tooth  and  claw.  But  neither  grows  morbid 
from  his  vision;  for  that  same  vision  shows  each  that 
the  ravening  destruction  is  only  a  weeding  out  of  the 
unfit.  There  is  too  much  sunlight  in  the  trapper's 
world,  too  much  fresh  air  in  his  lungs,  too  much  red 
blood  in  his  veins  for  the  morbid  miasmas  that  bring 
bilious  fumes  across  the  mental  vision  of  the  housed 
city  man. 

And  what  place  in  the  scale  of  destruction  does  the 
trapper  occupy?  Modern  sentiment  has  almost  painted 
him  as  a  red-dyed  monster,  excusable,  perhaps,  because 
necessity  compels  the  hunter  to  slay,  but  after  all  only 
the  most  highly  developed  of  the  creatures  that  prey. 
Is  this  true  ?  Arch-destroyer  he  may  be ;  but  it  should 
be  remembered  that  he  is  the  destroyer  of  destroyers. 

Animals  kill  young  and  old,  male  and  female. 

The  true  trapper  does  not  kill  the  young;  for  that 


WHAT  THE  TRAPPER  STANDS  FOR  279 

would  destroy  his  next  year's  hunt.  He  does  not  kill 
the  mother  while  she  is  with  the  young.  He  kills  the 
grown  males  which — it  can  be  safely  said — have  killed 
more  of  each  other  than  man  has  killed  in  all  the 
history  of  trapping.  Wherever  regions  have  been 
hunted  by  the  pot-hunter,  whether  the  sportsman  for 
amusement  or  the  settler  supplying  his  larder,  game 
has  been  exterminated.  This  is  illustrated  by  all  the 
stretch  of  country  between  the  Platte  and  the  Sas- 
katchewan. Wherever  regions  have  been  hunted  only 
by  the  trapper,  game  is  as  plentiful  as  it  has  ever  been. 
This  is  illustrated  by  the  forests  of  the  Eockies,  by 
the  No-Man's  Land  south  of  Hudson  Bay  and  by  the 
Arctics.  Wherever  the  trapper  has  come  destroying 
grisly  and  coyote  and  wolverine,  the  prong  horn  and 
mountain-sheep  and  mountain-goat  and  wapiti  and 
moose  have  increased. 

But  the  trapper  stands  for  something  more  than  a 
game  warden,  something  more  than  the  most  merciful 
of  destroyers.  He  destroys  animal  life — a  life  which  is 
red  in  tooth  and  claw  with  murder  and  rapine  and 
cruelty — in  order  that  human  life  may  be  preserved, 
may  be  rendered  independent  of  the  elemental  powers 
that  wage  war  against  it. 

It  is  a  war  as  old  as  the  human  race,  this  struggle 
of  man  against  the  elements,  a  struggle  alike  reflected 
in  Viking  song  of  warriors  conquering  the  sea,  and  in 
the  Scandinavian  myth  of  pursuing  Fenris  wolf,  and 
in  the  Finnish  epic  of  the  man-hero  wresting  secrets 
of  life-bread  from  the  earth,  and  in  Indian  folk-lore 
of  a  Hiawatha  hunting  beast  and  treacherous  wind. 
It  is  a  war  in  which  the  trapper  stands  forth  as  a  con- 
queror, a  creature  sprung  of  earth,  trampling  all  the 


280  THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

obstacles  that  earth  can  offer  to  human  will  under  his 
feet,  finding  paths  through  the  wilderness  for  the  ex- 
plorer who  was  to  come  after  him,  opening  doors  of 
escape  from  stifled  life  in  crowded  centres  of  popula- 
tion, preparing  a  highway  for  the  civilization  that  was 
to  follow  his  own  wandering  trail  through  the  wilds. 


APPENDIX 


WHEN  in  Labrador  and  Newfoundland  a  fews  years  ago,  the 
writer  copied  the  entries  of  an  old  half-breed  woman  trapper's 
daily  journal  of  her  life.  It  is  fragmentary  and  incoherent,  but 
gives  a  glimpse  of  the  Indian  mind.  It  is  written  in  English. 
She  was  seventy-five  years  old  when  the  diary  opened  in  Decem- 
ber, 1893.  Her  name  was  Lydia  Campbell  and  she  lived  at 
Hamilton  Inlet.  Having  related  how  she  shot  a  deer,  skinning 
it  herself,  made  her  snow-shoes  and  set  her  rabbit  snares,  she 
closes  her  first  entry  with  : 

"Well,  as  I  sed,  I  can't  write  much  at  a  time  now,  for  i  am 
getting  blind  and  some  mist  rises  up  before  me  if  i  sew,  read  or 
write  a  little  while." 

Lydia  Campbell's  mother  was  captured  by  Eskimo.  She  ran 
away  when  she  had  grown  up,  to  quote  her  own  terse  diary, 
"crossed  a  river  on  drift  sticks,  wading  in  shallows,  through 
woods,  meeting  bears,  sleeping  under  trees — seventy  miles  flight 
— saw  a  French  boat — took  off  skirt  and  waved  it  to  them — 
came — took  my  mother  on  board — worked  for  them — with  the 
sealers — camped  on  the  ice. 

4 'As  there  was  no  other  kind  of  women  to  marrie  hear,  the 
few  English  men  each  took  a  wife  of  that  sort  and  they  never 
was  sorry  that  they  took  them,  for  they  was  great  workers  and 
so  it  came  to  pass  that  I  was  one  of  the  youngest  of  them." 
[Meaning,  of  course,  that  she  was  the  daughter  of  one  of  these 
marriages.] 

"Our  young  man  pretended  to  spark  the  two  daughters  of 
Tomas.  He  was  a  one-armed  man,  for  he  had  shot  away  one 

281 


282      THE  STORY  OF  THE  TRAPPER 

arm  firing  at  a  large  bird.  ...  He  double-loaded  his  gun  in 
his  fright,  so  the  por  man  lost  one  of  his  armes,  ...  he  was 
so  smart  with  his  gun  that  he  could  bring  down  a  bird  flying 
past  him,  or  a  deer  running  past  he  would  be  the  first  to  bring 
it  down." 

"They  was  holden  me  hand  and  telling  me  that  I  must  be 
his  mother  now  as  his  own  mother  is  dead  and  she  was  a  great 
friend  of  mine  although  we  could  not  understand  each  other's 
language  sometimes,  still  we  could  make  it  out  with  sins  and 
wonders." 

"April  7,  1894.— Since  I  last  wrote  on  this  book,  I  have 
been  what  people  call  cruising  about  here.  I  have  been  visiting 
some  of  my  friends,  though  scattered  far  apart,  with  my  snow- 
shoes  and  axe  on  my  shoulders.  The  nearest  house  to  this  place 
is  about  five  miles  up  a  beautiful  river,  and  then  through  woods, 
what  the  french  calls  a  portage — it  is  what  I  call  pretty.  Many  is 
the  time  that  I  have  been  going  with  dogs  and  komatick  40  or 
50  years  ago  with  my  husband  and  family  to  N.  W.  River,  to 
the  Hon.  Donald  A.  Smith  and  family  to  keep  N.  Year  or 
Easter." 

"My  dear  old  sister  Hannah  Mishlin  who  is  now  going  on 
for  80  years  old  and  she  is  smart  yet,  she  hunts  fresh  meat  and 
chops  holes  in  the  3  foot  ice  this  very  winter  and  catches  trout 
with  her  hook,  enough  for  her  household,  her  husband  not  able 
to  work,  he  has  a  bad  complaint." 

"  You  must  please  excuse  my  writing  and  spelling  for  I  have 
never  been  to  school,  neither  had  I  a  spelling  book  in  my  young 
day — me  a  native  of  this  country,  Labrador,  Hamilton's  Inlet, 
Esquimaux  Bay — if  you  wish  to  know  who  I  am,  I  am  old 
Lydia  Campbell,  formerly  Lydia  Brooks,  then  Blake,  after 
Blake,  now  Campbell.  So  you  see  ups  and  downs  has  been  my 
life  all  through,  and  now  I  am  what  I  am — prais  the  Lord." 

"I  have  been  hunting  most  every  day  since  Easter,  and  to 


APPENDIX  283 

some  of  my  rabbit  snares  and  still  traps,  cat  traps  and  mink 
traps.  I  caught  7  rabbits  and  1  marten  and  I  got  a  fix  and  4 
partridges,  about  500  trout  besides  household  duties — never 
leave  out  morning  and  Evening  prayers  and  cooking  and  baking 
and  washing  for  5  people — 3  motherless  little  children — with 
so  much  to  make  for  sale  out  of  seal  skin  and  deer  skin  shoes, 
bags  and  pouches  and  what  not.  .  .  .  You  can  say  well  done 
old  half-breed  woman  in  Hamilton's  Inlet.  Good  night,  God 
bless  U3  all  and  send  us  prosperity. 

"Yours  ever  true, 

"LYDIA  CAMPBELL." 

"We  are  going  to  have  an  evening  worship,  my  poor  old 
man  is  tired,  he  has  been  a  long  way  today  and  he  shot  2 
beautyful  white  partridges.  Our  boy  heer  shot  once  spruce 
partridge." 

"Caplin  so  plentiful  boats  were  stopped,  whales,  walrusses 
and  white  bears." 

"Muligan  River,  May  24,  1894. — They  say  that  once  upon 
a  time  the  world  was  drowned  and  that  all  the  Esquimaux 
were  drownded  but  one  family  and  he  took  his  family  and 
dogs  and  chattels  and  his  seal-skin  boat  and  Kiak  and  Koma- 
ticks  and  went  on  the  highest  hill  that  they  could  see,  and 
stayed  there  till  the  rain  was  over  and  when  the  water  dried 
up  they  descended  down  the  river  and  got  down  to  the  plains 
and  when  they  could  not  see  any  more  people,  they  took  off 
the  bottoms  of  their  boots  and  took  some  little  white  [seal] 
pups  and  sent  the  poor  little  things  off  to  sea  and  they  drifted 
to  some  islands  far  away  and  became  white  people.  Then 
they  done  the  same  as  the  others  did  and  the  people  spread 
all  over  the  world.  Such  was  my  poor  father's  thought.  .  .  . 
There  is  up  the  main  river  a  large  fall,  the  same  that  the  Amer- 
ican and  English  gentlemen  have  been  up  to  see.  [Referring 
to  Mr.  Bryant,  of  Philadelphia,  who  visited  Grand  Falls.]  Well 
there  is  a  large  whirlpool  or  hole  at  the  bottom  of  the  fall. 
The  Indians  that  frequent  the  place  say  that  there  is  three 


284  THE  STORY  OP  THE  TRAPPER 

women — Indians — that  lives  under  that  place  or  near  to  it  I  am 
told,  and  at  times  they  can  hear  them  speaking  to  each  other 
louder  than  the  roar  of  the  falls."  [The  Indians  always  think 
the  mist  of  a  waterfall  signifies  the  presence  of  ghosts.] 

"I  have  been  the  cook  of  that  great  Sir  D.  D.  Smith  that  is 
in  Canada  at  this  time.  [In  the  days  when  Lord  Strathcona 
was  chief  trader  at  Hamilton  Inlet.]  He  was  then  at  Rigolet 
Post,  a  chief  trader  only,  now  what  is  he  so  great  !  He  was 
seen  last  winter  by  one  of  the  women  that  belong  to  this  bay. 
She  went  up  to  Canada.  .  .  .  and  he  is  gray  headed  and  bended, 
that  is  Sir  D.  D.  Smith." 

"August  1,  1894. — My  dear  friends,  you  will  please  excuse 
my  writing  and  spelling — the  paper  sweems  by  me,  my  eyesight 
is  dim  now " 


(D 


THE  END 


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44  Every  subject  is  treated  with  tolerance  and  yet  with  a  comprehensive  grasp." — 
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THE  LIVES  OF  ROYALTIES. 


The  Private  Life  of  the  Sultan. 

By  GEORGES  DORYS,  son  of  the  late  Prince  of  Satnos,  a  former  minister 
of  the  Sultan,  and  formerly  Governor  of  Crete.  Translated  by  Arthur 
Hornblow.  Uniform  with  "The  Private  Life  of  King  Edward  VII." 
Illustrated.  lamo.  Cloth,  $1.20  net ;  postage,  10  cents  additional. 


The  high  position  which  the  writer's  father  held  at  Constantinople  gave  the  son  a 
insight  into  the  personality  of  01 


close  insight  into  the  personality  of  one  of  the  least  known  of  modern  rulers,  so  far 


as  personality  is  concerned.  It  is  unnecessary  to  say  that  the  author  has  long  since 
left  the  domain  of  the  Sultan  of  Turkey,  and  he  is  now  a  member  of  the  Young  Turk 
party  and  a  resident  of  Paris.  It  is  announced  that  he  has  been  recently  condemned 
to  death  by  the  Sultan  on  account  of  this  book. 

The  Private  Life  of  King  Edward  VII. 

By  a  Member  of  the  Royal  Household.     Illustrated.     i2mo.    Cloth,  $1.50. 
"  While  the  book  gives  a  narrative  that  is  intimate  and  personal  in  character,  it  does 
not  descend  to  vulgar  narrative.     It  is  a  book  which  will  be  found  of  unusual  interest." 
—Brooklyn  Eaglt. 

The  Private  Life  of  the  Queen. 

By  a  Member  of  the  Royal  Household.  Illustrated.  12010.  Cloth,  $1.50. 
"  A  singularly  attractive  picture  of  Queen  Victoria.  .  .  .  The  interests  and  occu- 
pations that  make  up  the  Queen's  day,  and  the  functions  of  many  of  the  members  of  her 
household,  are  described  in  a  manner  calculated  to  gratify  the  natural  desire  to  know 
what  goes  on  behind  closed  doors  that  very  few  of  the  world's  dignitaries  are  privi- 
leged to  pass." '—Boston  Herald. 

The  Sovereigns  and  Courts  of  Europe. 

The  Home  and  Court  Life  and  Characteristics  of  the  Reigning  Families. 
By  "  POLITIKOS."  With  many  Portraits.  i2mo.  Cloth,  $1.50. 

"  The  anonymous  author  of  these  sketches  of  the  reigning  sovereigns  of  Europe 
appears  to  have  gathered  a  good  deal  of  curious  information  about  their  private  lives, 
manners,  and  customs,  and  has  certainly  in  several  instances  had  access  to  unusual 
sources.  The  result  is  a  volume  which  furnishes  views  of  the  kings  and  queens  con- 
cerned, far  fuller  and  more  intimate  than  can  be  found  elsewhere."— New  York 
Tribune. 

The  Life  of  his  Royal   Highness   the  Prince 
Consort. 

By  Sir  THEODORE  MARTIN.  In  five  volumes,  each  with  Portrait.  i2mo. 
Cloth,  $10.00. 

"  A  full  and  impartial  biography  of  a  noble  and  enlightened  prince.  .  .  .  Mr.  Mar- 
tin's work  is  not  gossipy,  not  light,  nor  yet  dull,  guarded  in  its  details  of  the  domestic 
lives  of  Albert  and  Victoria,  but  sufficiently  full  and  familiar  to  contribute  much  inter- 
esting information.  "—Chicago  Tribune. 

D.  APPLETON  AND  COMPANY,  NEW  YORK. 


D.   APPLETON  AND  COMPANY'S  PUBLICATIONS. 


REAR-GUARD  OF  THE  REVOLUTION. 

By  JAMES  R.  GILMORE  (Edmund   Kirke).    With  Portrait  of 
John  Sevier,  and  Map.     ismo.     Cloth,  $1.50. 

"  A  history  of  the  lives  of  John  Sevier,  Isaac  Shelby,  and  James  Robertson,  and  the 
part  they  bore  in  determining  the  fortunes  of  that  momentous  contest.  These  three 
men  not  only  planted  civilization  beyond  the  Alleghanies,  but  with  the  inconsiderable 
force  they  were  able  to  command  thwarted  the  British  plan  to  envelop  and  crush  the 
Southern  colonies,  and  turn  the  tide  of  the  Revolution  at  King's  Mountain."—  Provi- 
dence Journal. 

JOHN  SEVIER  AS  A  COMMONWEALTH- 
BUILDER.  A  Sequel  to  "  The  Rear-Guard  of  the  Revolution." 
By  JAMES  R.  GILMORE  (Edmund  Kirke).  I2mo.  Cloth,  $1.50. 

"  In  the  work  before  us  the  author  continues  the  story  of  Tennessee's  progress 
toward  the  West,  its  struggles  with  the  ^  Indians,  and  its  difficulties  with  the  State  of 
North  Carolina,  resulting  in  the  formation  of  the  short-lived  State  of  Franklin.  .  .  . 
It  is  the  merit  of  Mr.  Gilmore  that  he  has  selected  the  essential  facts  in  these  occur- 
rences from  sources  where  they  are  likely  to  receive  attention  only  from  the  specialist, 
transformed  the  actors  from  documentary  characters  into  living  men,  and  presented 
their  story  in  a  spirited  narrative."  —  N.  Jr.  Evening  Post, 

HE     ADVANCE-GUARD     OF     WESTERN 
CIVILIZA  TION.    By  JAMES  R.  GILMORE  (Edmund  Kirke). 
With  Map,  and  Portrait  of  James  Robertson.  I2mo.  Cloth,  $1.50. 
"  This  work  may  be  regarded  as  the  companion  and  logical  sequence  of  the  author's 
previous  publications.  .  .  .  The  three  volumes  well  fulfill  Mr.  Gilmore's  intention  of 
covering  a  neglected  period  of  American  history.  .  .  .  The  lessons  they  impart  are 
those  of  patriotism,  energy,  and  perseverance  ;  and  the  achievements  of  Sevier,  Rob- 
ertson, and  Shelby  are  surely  worth  the  serious  study  of  citizens  of  any  country  who 
seek  models  of  integrity,  patience,  courage,  and   self-sacrifice."—jL0«<&«  Morning 
Pott. 


T 


TWO  SPIES:  Nathan  Hale  and  John  Andrf. 
By  BENSON  J.  LOSSING,  LL.  D.  Illustrated  with  Pen-and-ink 
Sketches.  Containing  also  Anna  Seward's  "  Monody  on  Major 
Andre."  Square  8vo.  Cloth,  gilt  top,  $2.00. 

"  The  comparison  between  Andre1  and  Nathan  Hale  is  one  which  suggests  itself, 
and  which  has  often  been  made;  but  the  comparison  has  never  been  carried  out  so 
completely  or  with  such  thoroughness  of  historical  detail  as  in  this  interesting  volume." 
—Christian  Union. 

THAN  ALLEN.      The  Robin  Hood  of  Vermont. 
By  HENRY  HALL.    i2mo.    Cloth,  $1.00. 

"  A  welcome  addition  to  American  historical  literature.  The  hero  of  Ticonderoga 
lives  again  in  this  graphic  portrayal  of  the  incidents  and  adventures  of  his  eventful 
life.  Ethan  Allen  is  one  of  the  most  picturesque  of  the  sturdy  patriots  of  Revolution- 
ary days.  .  .  .  Accurate  to  the  last  degree,  and  told  in  bright,  telling  language,  the 
story  should  be  widely  read  by  the  young,  who  may  gather  from  the  perusal  of  the 
book  patriotic  inspiration,  and  see  how  to  live  in  touch  with  one's  times  and  answer 
their  demands."—  New  York  Observer. 

D.  APPLETON  AND  COMPANY,  NEW  YORK. 


